THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


[Page  15] 


"  'HE'S  IK  JAIL'" 


THE    KENTUCKIANS 

B  IRovel 


BY 


JOHN  FOX,  JR 

iUTHOK  OF  "A  OCMBKELAN1)  VENDETTA' 
"HELL  FEE  SAETAIN"  KTO. 


ILLUSTUATEW 

BY    W.    T.    SMEDLEY 


NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

1898 


BY  JOHN  FOX,  JK. 


"HELL  FER  SARTAIN,"  and  Other  Stories.    Post 
Svo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  Uncut  Edges,  $1  00. 

A  CUMBERLAND  VENDETTA,  and  Other  Stories. 
IHustrated.    Post  Svo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $1  26. 


NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON: 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  PUBLISHERS. 


Copyright,  1897,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

All  rights  ruerted. 


TO 
MY  FATHER 

AND 

MY  FATHER'S  KENTUCKIANS 


ILLUSTKATIONS 


'  HE'S  IN  JAIL  '  ". .  Frontispiece 

A  PROPHET  WAS    AMONG  THEM"  .      .      .Facing  p.    4 

THE  TWO   STEPPED  PROM   THE    GREEK 

PORTICO  INTO  THE  SUNLIGHT"  .     .  8 
MARSHALL    WENT    AT    ONCE    TO    THE 

PIANO" "      82 

:  HE  TOSSED  HIS  WEAPON  ASIDE  "...  180 

'  'I  KNOW  WHAT  YOU  THOUGHT1".     .     .  "    222 


THE  people  of  the  little  Kentucky  cap 
ital  do  not  often  honor  the  gray  walls  of 
their  state -house.  The  legislators  play 
small  part  in  the  social  life  of  the  town. 
A  member  must  have  blood,  as  well  as 
gifts  unusual,  who  can  draw  from  the  fine 
old  homes  a  people  with  a  full  century  of 
oratory  and  social  distinction  behind  them, 
and,  further  back,  the  proud  traditions  of 
Virginia.  For  years  young  Marshall  was 
the  first  to  quite  fill  the  measure,  and  he 
was  to  speak  that  afternoon.  The  la 
dies'  gallery  was  full,  and  the  Governor's 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

daughter,  Anne,  sat  midway.  About  her 
was  a  sudden  flutter  and  a  leaning  for 
ward  when  Marshall  strode  a  little  con 
sciously  down  the  aisle  and  took  his  seat. 
When  he  rose  to  speak,  the  quick  silence 
of  the  House  was  a  tribute  to  thrill  him. 

It  was  oratory  that  one  hears  rarely 
now,  even  in  the  South.  There  was  an 
old-fashioned  pitch  to  the  vibrant  voice, 
the  fire  of  strong  feeling  in  the  fearless 
eye,  an  old-fashioned  grace  and  dignity  of 
manner,  and  a  dash  that  his  high  color 
showed  to  be  not  wholly  natural.  The 
speech  was  old-fashioned,  emotional,  the 
sentences  full,  swinging,  poetic,  rich  with 
imagery  and  classical  allusion.  And  al 
ways — in  voice,  eye,  bearing,  and  gesture 
—was  there  gallant  consciousness  of  the 
gallery  behind.  More  than  once  his  eyes 
swept  the  curve  of  it  ,•  and  when  he  came 
to  pay  his  unfailing  tribute  to  the  women 
of  his  land,  he  turned  quite  around,  until 
his  back  was  upon  the  Speaker  and  his 
2 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

uplifted  face  straight  towards  the  Gov 
ernor's  daughter,  who  moved  her  idle  fan 
and  colored  as  many  an  eye  was  turned 
from  him  to  her. 

The  Speaker's  gavel  lay  untouched  be 
fore  him  when  the  last  period  rang  through 
the  chamber.  It  would  have  been  useless 
against  the  outbreak  of  applause  that  fol 
lowed.  Marshall  had  flamed  anew  from 
an  already  brilliant  past.  Anne  was  lean 
ing  back  with  luminous  eyes  and  a  proud 
heart.  The  gallant  old  Governor  himself 
was  hurrying  from  under  the  gallery  to 
bend  over  his  protege  and  grasp  his  hand. 
The  pit  of  the  House  buzzed  like  a  hive  of 
bees.  Down  there  a  Greek  passion  for 
oratory  was  still  alive ;  in  the  older  men 
the  young  fellow  stirred  memories  that 
were  sacred ;  and  the  hum  rose  so  high 
that  the  sharp  rap  of  the  gavel  went 
through  it  twice  unnoticed,  then  twice 
again,  more  sharply  still.  The  Speaker's 
face  was  turned  to  one  dark  corner  of  the 
3 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

room  where,  under  the  big  clock,  stood 
the  rough  figure  of  a  mountaineer,  with 
hands  behind  him  and  swaying  awkward 
ly  from  side  to  side,  as  though  his  tongue 
were  refusing  him  utterance.  Once  he 
cleared  his  throat  huskily,  and  a  smile 
started  on  many  a  face,  and  quickly 
stopped,  for  it  was  plain  that  the  man's 
trouble  was  not  embarrassment,  but  some 
storm  of  feeling  that  threatened  to  engulf 
his  brain  and  surge  out  in  a  torrent  of  in 
vective.  The  mountaineer  himself  seemed 
fearful  of  some  such  thing ;  for,  with  tur 
bulent  calmness,  he  began  slowly,  and 
went  on  with  great  care.  No  reason  was 
apparent,  but  at  the  sound  of  his  voice 
the  House  turned  towards  him  with  the 
silence  of  premonition.  One  by  one  wrin 
kles  came  into  the  Speaker's  strong,  placid 
face.  Marshall,  quick  to  feel  merit  and 
generous  to  grant  it,  had  straightened  in 
his  chair.  The  old  Governor,  going  out, 
was  halted  by  the  voice  at  the  door. 
4 


"A  PROPHET  WAS  AMONG  THEM" 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

And  one,  who  himself  loved  the  Govern 
or's  daughter,  remembered  long  after 
wards  that  she  leaned  suddenly  towards 
the  man,  with  her  eyes  wide  and  her  face 
quite  tense  with  absorption.  The  secret 
was  in  more  than  his  simple  bigness,  more 
than  his  massive  head  and  heavy  hair,  in 
more  even  than  the  extraordinary  voice 
that  came  from  him.  It  was  an  electric 
recognition  of  force — the  force  with  which 
Nature  does  her  heavy  work  under  the 
earth  and  in  the  clouds ;  and  here  and 
there  an  old  member  knew  that  a  prophet 
was  among  them. 

It  was  the  old  fight — patrician  against 
plebeian,  crude  force  against  culture — but 
the  House  knew '  that  young  Randolph 
Marshall,  who  already  challenged  the 
brilliant  traditions  of  a  great  forefather, 
who  was  a  promise  to  redeem  a  degener 
ate  present  and  bring  back  a  great  past, 
had  found  an  easy  peer  in  the  awkward 
bulk  just  risen  before  them,  unknown. 
5 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

There  was  little  applause  when  the 
mountaineer  was  done.  The  surprise 
was  too  great,  the  people  were  too  much 
moved.  Adjournment  came  at  once,  and 
everybody  asked  who  the  man  was,  and 
nobody  could  tell.  One  member,  who 
still  stood  gripping  his  own  wrist  hard, 
recalled  on  a  sudden  the  recent  death  of  a 
mountain  representative;  and,  on  a  sud 
den,  the  old  Governor  at  the  door  remem 
bered  that  he  had  signed  credentials  for 
somebody  to  take  a  dead  member's  place. 
This  was  the  man.  Outside,  Anne  Bruce 
came  slowly  down  the  oval  stone  stair 
way,  and  at  the  bottom  Marshall  was 
waiting  for  her.  She  smiled  a  little  ab 
sently  when  he  raised'  his  hat,  and  the 
two  stepped  from  the  Greek  portico  into 
the  sunlight  and,  passing  slowly  under 
the  elms  and  out  the  sagging  iron  gate, 
turned  towards  the  old  Mansion.  On  the 
curb-stone,  just  outside,  stood  one  of  the 
figures  familiar  to  the  streets  of  the  capi- 
(i 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

tal,  a  man  in  stripes — a  "  trusty  "  on  pa 
role  —  whose  square  sullen  jaw  caught 
Anne's  attention  sharply,  as  did  the  sign 
of  force  in  a  face  always.  A  moment 
later,  the  big  mountaineer  stopped  there 
and  talked  kindly  with  the  convict  awhile. 
Then,  still  in  a  tremor,  he  moved  on  alone, 
across  the  town  and  through  the  old 
wooden  bridge  over  the  river,  then  out  to 
Devil's  Hollow  and  the  hills. 


II 


THE  sun  must  climb  mountains  first — 
the  Cumberland  range,  that  grim  and 
once  effectual  protest  against  the  march 
of  the  race  westward.  Over  this  frown 
ing  wall,  the  first  light  flashes  down 
through  primitive  woods  and  into  fast 
nesses  that  hold  the  sources  of  great  riv 
ers  and  riches  unimagined,  under  and  on 
the  earth  ;  beyond,  it  slants  the  crests  of 
lesser  hills  and  bushy  knolls  that  sink  by- 
and-by  to  the  gentle  undulations  of  blue- 
grass  pasture  and  woodland ;  south  and 
west  then,  catching  the  spire  of  convent 
and  monastery,  over  fields  of  pennyroyal, 
and  finally  through  the  Purchase  —  last 
clutch  of  the  Spaniard — to  light  up  the 
yellow  river  that  holds  a  strange  mixt- 


:  THE   TWO   STEPPED   PROM    THE    GREEK    PORTICO    INTO 
THE   SUNLIGHT  " 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

ure  of  soils  and  people  in  the  hollow  of 
its  arm. 

Something  more  than  a  century  ago 
the  range  gave  way  a  little,  as  earth  and 
water  must  when  the  Anglo-Saxon  starts, 
but  only  to  say,  "  You  may  pass  over  and 
on,  but  what  drops  behind  is  mine ;  and  I 
hold  my  own."  To-day  its  woods  are 
primeval,  its  riches  are  unrifled,  and  its 
people  are  the  people  of  another  age — for 
the  range  has  held  its  own. 

These  men  of  the  mountains  and  the 
people  of  the  blue-grass  are  the  extremes 
of  civilization  in  the  State.  Through  the 
brush  country  they  can  almost  touch 
hands,  and  yet  they  know  as  little  and 
have  as  little  care  of  one  another  as  though 
a  sea  were  between  them.  A  few  years 
ago  there  was  but  one  point  where  they 
ever  came  in  contact,  one  point  where 
their  interests  could  clash.  That  was  the 
capital,  the  lazy  little  capital,  on  both 
sides  of  the  river  between  the  big  sleepy 
9 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

hills,  with  its  old,  gray  wooden  bridge,  its 
sturdy  old  homes,  its  State  buildings  of 
gray  stone  and  classic  porticos,  and  its 
dead  asleep,  up  in  the  last  sunlight,  around 
the  first  great  Kentuckian  — the  hunter 
Boone.  There  the  river  links  highland 
with  lowland  like  an  all  but  useless  ar 
tery,  barren  hill -side  with  rich  pasture- 
land,  blue -grass  with  rhododendron,  de 
terioration  with  slow  progress,  darkness 
with  light  that  sometimes  is  a  little  dim, 
the  present  century  with  the  last.  The 
big  hills  about  the  town  are  little  moun 
tains  that  have  followed  the  river  down 
from  the  great  highlands,  and  have  brought 
with  them  mute  messengers  —  mountain 
trees,  mountain  birds,  and  mountain  flow 
ers—to  ask  that  the  dark  region  within 
be  not  wholly  forgot,  and  to  show  that 
the  wish  of  nature  at  least  is  for  brother 
hood.  Down  this  river  come  wild  rafts 
men,  who  stalk  along  the  middle  of  the 
street,  single  file  and  curiously  subdued ; 
10 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

who  climb  through  the  car  windows,  and 
are  swept  through  the  blue -grass,  to 
trudge  the  old  Wilderness  Road  back 
home.  Here  are  two  points  of  close  con 
tact  for  the  mountaineer  and  the  lowland- 
er — the  legislature  and  the  penitentiary. 
Thirty  miles  away  is  an  old  university — 
the  first  college  built  west  of  the  Al- 
leghanies — where  a  mountaineer  drifted 
in  occasionally  to  learn  to  teach  or  to 
preach.  Nowhere  else  and  in  no  way 
else  had  the  extremes  ever  touched,  until 
now,  for  the  first  time  in  history,  they 
were  in  conflict. 

A  feud — one  of  those  relics  of  mediaeval 
days  that  had  been  held  like  a  fossil  in 
the  hills — had  broken  out  afresh.  It  was 
called  the  Keaton-Stallard  "  war "  in  the 
mountains,  and  it  had  been  giving  trouble 
a  long  while.  Recently  the  county  judge 
had  been  driven  from  the  court-house, 
and  the  Attorney  -  General  of  the  State 
had  gone  with  soldiers  to  hold  court  at 
11 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  county -seat.  The  only  verdict  ren 
dered  during  the  term  was  against  the 
General  himself  for  carrying  a  weapon 
concealed ;  and  a  heavy  fine  was  imposed 
for  the  same,  which  the  Governor  had  to 
remit.  Meanwhile  the  feudsmen  were 
out  in  the  brush,  waiting.  When  the  sol 
diers  went  back  to  the  blue-grass,  they 
came  out  from  their  hiding-places  and  be 
gan  over  again.  Now  it  was  worse  than 
ever.  The  Keatons  had  got  the  Stallards 
besieged  not  long  since,  and  the  Keaton 
leader  tried  to  get  a  cannon.  In  good 
faith,  and  with  a  humor  that  was  mighty 
because  unconscious,  he  had  tried  to  pur 
chase  one  from  the  State  authorities — 
from  the  Governor  himself.  Judge,  jail 
er,  sheriff,  and  constable  were  involved 
now,  and  the  county  was  nearing  anarchy. 
The  reputation  of  the  State  was  at  is 
sue,  and  civilization  in  the  blue-grass  was 
rebuking  barbarism  in  the  mountains. 
Abolish  the  county,  was  the  cry  at  the 
12 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

capital,  and  that  afternoon  Marshall  had 
voiced  it.  He  had  been  taken  off  guard. 
He  had  gone  down  the  current  of  tradi 
tion,  catching  up  straws  that  are  anybody's 
for  the  catching — stock  allusions  to  wolf- 
scalps  and  pauperism ;  scathing  mountain 
lawlessness  as  a  red  blot  on  the  'scutcheon 
of  the  State,  which,  to  quote  the  spirit  of 
his  talk,  had  stained  the  highland  border 
of  the  commonwealth  with  blood,  and 
abroad  was  engulfing  the  reputation  of 
the  lowland  blue-grass ;  contrasting,  final 
ly,  the  garden-spot  of  the  earth,  his  own 
land  of  milk  and  honey,  with  the  black 
ribs  of  rock  and  forest  that  still  harbor 
the  evil  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It 
had  never  been  better  done,  for  under 
the  humor  and  easy  good -nature  of  the 
speech  were  a  quivering  pride  of  State 
and  a  bitter  arraignment  of  the  people 
who  were  bringing  it  into  disrepute.  The 
mountaineer  was  a  straggler,  a  deserter 
from  the  ranks.  He  was  vicious,  un- 
13 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

trustworthy,  ignorant,  lawless,  and  con 
tent  with  his  degradation.  He  was  idle, 
shiftless,  hopeless ;  a  burden  to  the  State, 
a  drawback  to  civilization.  That  was  the 
plain  truth  under  Marshall's  courteous 
words,  and,  well  told  as  it  was,  it  would 
have  been  better  told  had  he  known  the 
presence  of  the  rough  champion  who,  an 
swering  just  that  truth,  tore  apart  his 
loose  net-work  with  the  ease  of  summer 
lightning  lifting  the  horizon  at  dusk. 
His  was  a  voice  from  the  wilderness ;  it 
bespoke  a  new  and  throbbing  power  in 
the  destiny  of  the  State ;  it  proclaimed  a 
commercial  epoch.  He  admitted  much, 
he  denied  somewhat,  he  made  little  de 
fence,  and  he  apologized  not  at  all.  His 
appeal  was  for  fairness  —  that  was  all; 
and  it  was  fierce,  passionate,  and  tender. 
He  was  a  mountaineer.  He  lived  in  the 
county  under  discussion,  in  the  town 
where  the  feud  was  going  on.  More,  an 
uncle  of  his  had  once  been  a  leader  of 
14 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  Stallard  faction.  His  people  were 
idle,  shiftless,  ignorant,  lawless.  No  won 
der.  They  had  started  as  backwoods 
men  a  century  ago ;  they  had  lived  apart 
from  the  world  and  without  books, 
schools,  or  churches  since  the  Revolution ; 
they  had  had  a  century  of  such  a  life  in 
which  to  deteriorate.  Their  law  was  lax. 
They  lived  apart  from  one  another  as 
well,  and,  of  necessity,  public  sentiment 
was  weak  and  unity  of  action  difficult — 
except  for  mischief.  It  was  easy  for  ten 
bad  men  to  give  character  to  a  communi 
ty—to  embroil  ninety  good  ones.  And 
that  was  what  had  been  done.  The  good 
ninety  were  there  for  every  ten  that  were 
bad.  Nobody  deplored  the  feud  more 
than  he,  but  he  saw  there  were  times 
when  people  must  take  the  law  into  their 
own  hands.  The  mountain  people  must 
in  the  end  govern  themselves,  and  they 
could  not  begin  too  soon.  To  disrupt  the 
county  would  be  to  take  away  the  only 
15 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

remedy  possible  in  the  end.  Then  the 
heavy  brows  lifted,  and  a  surprising  chal 
lenge  came.  By  what  right  and  from 
what  high  place  did  the  people  of  the 
blue-grass  rebuke  the  people  of  the  moun 
tains?  "Were  they  less  quick  to  fight? 
In  one  section,  the  fighting  was  by  indi 
viduals  ;  in  the  other,  families  and  friends , 
for  a  good  reason  took  up  the  quarrel. 
Was  not  that  the  great  difference?  And 
for  whom  was  there  the  less  excuse  ?  For 
the  people  who  knew,  or  for  the  ignorant ; 
for  them  who  could  enforce  the  law,  or 
for  them  who,  because  of  their  environ 
ment,  were  almost  helpless?  Who  knew 
how  powerful  that  environment  had  been  ? 
Who  knew  that  it  did  not  make  the 
mighty  distinctions  between  the  moun 
taineers  and  the  people  of  the  blue-grass ; 
that  the  slipping  of  a  linchpin  in  a  wagon 
on  the  Wilderness  Road  had  not  made 
the  difference  between  his  own  family 
and  the  proudest  in  the  State  ;  that  the 
16 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

gentleman  himself  was  not  scoring  his 
own  kin  ?  Why  not  ?  And  with  stirring 
queries  like  these  he  closed  like  a  trumpet 
over  the  future  of  his  much-mocked  hills 
when  their  riches  were  unlocked  to  their 
own  people  and  to  the  outer  world.  It 
was  the  man  that  made  the  sensation. 
What  he  said,  at  another  time  and  from 
another  source,  would  have  got  scant  at 
tention  and  no  credence.  But  two  facts 
spoke  for  him  now :  already  a  tide  of 
speculation  was  turning  into  those  little 
known  hills,  and  there  before  the  House 
was  at  least  one  human  product  of  them 
who  plainly  could  force  the  question  to  be 
handled  with  serious  care. 

It  was  the  power  of  the  speech  that 
stung  Marshall.  The  matter  of  it  was  of 
little  moment  to  him.  Once  in  a  while 
he  had  chased  a  red  fox  from  the  blue- 
grass  to  the  foot-hills.  As  a  boy,  he  had 
gone  with  his  father  on  annual  trips  to 
the  Cumberland  to  fish  and  to  hunt  deer. 

B  17 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

The  Marshalls  even  owned  mountain  lands 
somewhere,  which,  with  their  sole  crop  of 
taxes,  had  been  a  jest  in  the  family  for 
generations.  That  Avas  the  little  he  knew 
of  his  own  mountains.  He  had  cared  even 
less;  but,  while  he  listened,  his  sense  of 
fairness  made  him  quickly  sorry  that  he 
had  spoken  with  such  confidence  when 
there  was  room  for  any  doubt ;  and  be 
fore  the  mountaineer  was  done  he  was 
silently  and  uneasily  measuring  strength 
with  him,  point  by  point. 

To  Anne,  the  man  and  the  speech  were 
a  revelation :  she  barely  knew  her  State 
had  mountains.  She  hardly  spoke  on  her 
way  home,  and  she  seemed  not  to  notice 
Marshall's  unusual  silence. 

"lie  has  the  fascination  of  something 
new  and  perhaps  terrible,"  she  said  once. 
"  And  it's  startling,  what  he  said.  I  won 
der  if  it  can  be  true?"  And  again,  a  mo 
ment  later,  slowly:  "It  is  very  strange; 
it  all  seems  to  have  happened  before." 
18 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

Marshall's  answer  was  a  little  grim : 
"  Once  is  enough  for  me,  I  think." 
"  You  and  your  speech,"  she  went  on, 
barely  heeding  his  interruption.    "  It  seem 
ed  as  though  I  had  already  heard  you  make 
just  that  speech  under  just  those  circum 
stances.     It's  one  of  those  queer  experi 
ences  that  seem  to  have  occurred  before, 
down  to  minute  details." 

"  That  was  the  trouble,"  said  Marshall, 
quietly.  "  I  made  that  speech,  practically, 
on  my  graduating-day.  I  hadn't  studied 
the  question  since." 

Anne's  face  cleared.  "  Oh,  that's  the 
explanation !  A  thing  seems  to  have  hap 
pened  before,  I  suppose,  because  it  has  so 
nearly  happened  that  it  seems  to  be  ex 
actly  the  same  thing." 

"  Yes,"  assented  Marshall,  but  he  was 
watching  Anne  steadily.  He  was  already 
smarting  with  humiliation,  and  it  hurt 
him  that  she  could  be  so  absorbed  as  to 
carelessly  press  the  thorn  in  his  flesh  still 
19 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

farther  in,  and  apparently  not  guess  or 
not  care  how  it  rankled. 

"  Once  even  that  man's  face  seemed  fa 
miliar,"  she  added.  "  I'd  like  to  know  all 
about  him."  They  had  reached  the  steps 
of  the  Mansion,  and  Marshall  was  taking 
off  his  hat. 

"  Make  him  tell  you." 

Anne  looked  up  quickly.     "  I  will." 

"  Good-bye." 

Anne  smiled.  She  was  accustomed  to 
that  tone ;  she  had  forgiven  it  many  times ; 
she  had  been  distrait,  and  she  would  for 
give  it  again.  "  Good-bye,"  she  said,  gently. 


Ill 


IT  was  Saturday,  and  Marshall  always 
spent  Sunday  at  home.  It  was  the  run 
of  an  hour  to  Lexington  on  the  fast  train, 
and  at  sunset  he  was  in  a  buggy,  behind 
a  little  blooded  mare,  and  on  one  of  the 
white  turnpikes  that  make  a  spider's  web 
of  the  blue-grass,  speeding  home.  A  red 
arc  of  the  sun  was  still  visible  just  behind 
the  statue  of  the  great  Commoner,  and 
across  the  long,  low  sky  one  cloud  in  the 
east  was  still  rosy  with  light.  Already 
the  dew  was  rising,  and  when  he  swept 
down  over  a  little  bridge  in  a  hollow  the 
air  was  deliciously  cool  and  heavy  with  the 
wet  fragrance  of  mint  and  pennyroyal. 
On  either  side  the  vespers  of  a  song-spar 
row  would  radiate  now  and  then  from  the 
21 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

top  of  a  low  weed,  and  a  meadow -lark 
would  rise  and  wheel,  singing,  towards  the 
west.  Marshall's  chin  was  almost  on  his 
breast.  The  reins  were  loose,  and  the  no 
ble  little  mare  was  plying  her  swift  legs 
so  easily  under  her  that  her  high  head  and 
shining  back  gave  hardly  a  sign  of  effort. 
She  let  the  dark  have  barely  time  to  settle 
over  the  rolling  fields  before  she  stopped 
of  her  own  accord  at  her  master's  home 
gate.  Marshall  got  out  with  some  diffi 
culty,  and,  without  a  word  of  command, 
she  walked  through  the  gate  and  waited 
for  him  to  climb  in.  The  buggy  made  no 
noise  on  the  thick  turf,  and  no  one  was  in 
sight  when  he  reached  the  stiles. 

"  Tom !" 

"  Yessuh !" 

The  voice  came  from  a  whitewashed 
cabin  behind  a  clump  of  lilac,  and  an  old 
negro  shuffled  hastily  after  it.  The  young 
fellow's  voice  was  impatient.  A  woman's 
figure  appeared  in  the  doorway  under  the 

22 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

sunrise  window-light  as  Marshall  climbed 
the  stiles. 

"  Eannie !" 

"  Yes,  mother,"  he  answered ;  and  he 
held  his  breath  while  she  kissed  him.  It 
was  a  big  hall  that  he  entered,  with  a 
graceful,  semi-Oriental  arch  midway,  and 
two  doors  opening  on  either  side.  The 
parlor  was  lighted,  and  through  its  door 
old  furniture  and  old  portraits  were  visi 
ble  ;  and  ancient  wall-paper,  brought  from 
England  a  century  since,  blue  in  color,  with 
clouds  painted  under  the  high  ceiling,  and 
an  English  stag -chase  running  entirely 
around  the  four  walls.  The  ring  of  girl 
ish  laughter  came  down  the  stairway  as 
Marshall  passed  into  the  dining-room.  His 
mother  had  gathered  in  a  little  house-party 
of  girls  from  the  neighborhood,  as  she  often 
did,  to  brighten  his  home-coming.  Supper 
was  over,  and  they  were  awaiting  the  ar 
rival  of  young  men  from  town.  Marshall 
ate  little  and  had  little  to  say,  and  very 
23 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

slowly  a  shadow  passed  over  his  mothers 
brow  and  eyes. 

"What's  wrong,  my  son?"  she  asked, 
quietly. 

"  Nothing,  mother,  nothing.  Don't  both 
er."  He  laughed  slightly.  "Maybe  it's 
because  I've  got  a  rival." 

His  mother  smiled. 

"Oh  no,  not  with  her" — he  laughed 
again — "at  least,  not  yet.  A  man  beat 
me  speaking  this  afternoon.  He  took  me 
by  surprise,  but  I'll  be  ready  for  him  next 
time.  Still,  I'm  not  very  well,  and  I  can't 
go  into  the  parlor  to-night.  Besides,  I've 
got  some  writing  to  do.  Tell  them  how 
sorry  I  am,  won't  you?"  He  rose  from 
his  seat,  for  he  could  hear  the  coming 
guests  in  the  hall.  "  Good-night,"  he  said ; 
and  he  kissed  her  forehead  as  he  passed 
behind  her  chair,  but  the  shadow  that  was 
there  stayed. 

A  little  darky  girl  in  a  checked  cotton 
dress  lighted  his  way  outside  along  a  path 
24 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

of  round-stone  flagging.  For  the  house 
was  built  after  the  earliest  colonial  fashion, 
with  an  ell  left  and  right — one  of  which, 
disconnected  from  the  house  and  called 
the  "office"  in  slavery  days,  had  been 
Marshall's  room  since  the  day  he  started 
to  town  to  school.  It  signified  paternal 
trust ;  it  meant  independence.  His  room 
was  ready.  The  student-lamp  was  lighted. 
On  the  table  was  a  vase  of  flowers  from 
his  mother's  garden,  and  he  sat  down 
close  to  their  fragrance,  and,  with  a  con 
scious  purpose  of  fulfilling  his  word,  he 
did  try  for  a  while  to  write.  But  his 
hand  shook,  and  he  arose  and  opened  a 
pantry  door  to  one  side  of  the  fireplace, 
and  called  from  the  window  for  old  Tom 
to  bring  him  drinking-water.  The  glisten 
of  glass-ware  came  through  the  crack  of 
the  pantry  door,  and  the  old  negro  gave 
it  one  sullen  glance  and  went  out  without 
speaking.  Marshall  was  walking  up  and 
down  the  room.  Once  he  stopped  at  the 
25 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

mantel  to  look  at  the  picture  of  a  very 
young  girl  in  white  muslin  and  with  a  big 
Leghorn  hat  held  lightly  by  one  slender 
hand  in  her  lap.  Under  it  was  a  scrawl 
ing  line,  "  To  Rannie  from  Anne."  He 
turned  sharply  away  and  sat  down  at  his 
table  again,  with  his  forehead  on  his  crossed 
arras.  There  had  been  no  trouble,  no  doubt, 
between  the  two  in  those  young  days. 
Now  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  else ;  and 
it  was  in  one  of  these  wretched  intervals 
of  causeless  misunderstanding  that  a  hulk 
ing  countryman  had  taught  him  his  first 
bitter  lesson  in  defeat  while  Anne  looked 
on.  They  were  having  a  good  time  in  the 
parlor.  Somebody  was  playing  a  waltz. 
There  was  a  ripple  of  light  laughter 
through  the  hall  door,  and  some  deep- 
voiced  young  fellow  was  talking  low  on 
the  porch  not  far  from  his  window.  The 
sounds  smote  him  with  a  sharp  pain  of 
remoteness  from  it  all,  and  straightway  a 
memory  began  to  bridge  the  gap  between 
26 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

him  and  those  other  days ;  so  that  he  rose 
presently  and  took  down  the  picture  and 
put  it  on  the  table  before  him,  looking  at 
it  steadily.  In  a  little  while  he  unlocked 
a  drawer  at  his  right  hand,  and  took  out  a 
note-book  and  began  with  the  beginning, 
slowly  turning  the  leaves.  It  was  filled 
with  his  own  manuscript.  Here  and  there 
was  a  verse,  "  To  Anne."  On  every  page, 
from  every  paragraph,  the  name  sprang 
from  the  white  paper  —  Anne !  Anne ! 
Anne !  He  had  meant  to  burn  that  book ; 
the  impulse  came  now,  as  always ;  but  now, 
as  always,  he  went  on  turning  the  leaves. 
It  ran  back  years — to  the  childhood  of  the 
girl.  "  Her  father's  brain,  her  mother's 
heart,"  ran  one  line,  "  but  her  beauty  is 
her  own."  Some  of  the  verse  was  almost 
good.  It  was  Anne's  brow  here,  her  eyes 
there,  her  mouth,  her  hand,  her  arm ; 
"that  arm,"  he  read,  smiling  faintly — "  the 
little  hollow  midway  from  which  the  gra 
cious  lovely  lines  start  up  and  down.  It 

27 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

would  hold  the  rain  a  snowdrop  might 
catch;  dew  enough  for  the  bath  —  the 
ivory  bath — of  a  humming-bird;  enough 
nectar  to  make  Cupid  delirious,  were  he 
to  use  it  for  a  drinking-cup.  Looking  for 
Psyche,  the  little  god  rests  there,  no  doubt, 
while  she  sleeps.  If  he  doesn't,  he  is  blind 
indeed." 

Those  were  the  days  when  he  thought 
he  might  be  a  poet  or  a  novelist  if  either 
were  a  manlier  trade ;  if  there  were  not 
always  the  more  serious  business  of  law 
and  politics  to  which  he  was  committed 
by  inheritance.  Still  it  was  very  foolish, 
the  book,  and  with  the  impulse  again  to 
burn,  he  placed  it  back  in  the  drawer  and 
turned  the  key.  Then  he  put  the  picture 
in  its  place,  and  sat  down  again,  as  though 
he  would  go  on  with  his  work,  but,  in 
stead,  reached  suddenly  across  the  table. 
The  sound  of  old  Tom's  banjo  was  com 
ing  up  through  his  back  window  from 
the  lilacs  below,  and,  as  his  fingers  closed 

28 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

around  the  glass,  the  strum  started  up  be 
fore  him  the  old  array  of  ever- weakening 
visions — the  negro's  reproachful  look,  the 
deepening  shadows  in  his  mother's  face, 
the  pain  in  Anne's  clear  eyes — and  now 
a  new  one,  the  figure  of  the  mountaineer, 
burly,  vivid,  and  so  menacing  that  he  felt 
nerve,  muscle,  and  brain  get  suddenly 
tense  as  though  to  meet  some  shock. 
And  there  was  his  hand  trembling  like 
an  old  man's  under  the  green  shade  of 
the  lamp.  The  sight  smote  him  through 
with  a  fear  of  himself  so  sharp  that  he 
brushed  his  hands  rapidly  across  his  eyes, 
and  with  tightened  lips  once  more  took 
up  his  pen. 

The  moon  looked  in  at  his  window  ra 
diantly  when  he  pushed  the  curtains  aside 
to  close  a  shutter,  so  that  he  changed  his 
mind  about  going  to  bed,  and  blew  out 
his  lamp  and  sat  at  the  window,  looking 
out.  The  young  men  Avere  going  home. 
He  heard  the  laughing  good-byes  in  the 
29 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

hall,  and  the  low,  laughing  talk  of  the 
young  fellows  where  they  were  unhitch 
ing  their  horses  behind  the  shrubbery; 
then  the  soft  beat  of  hoofs  and  wheels 
on  the  turf,  the  loud  slam  of  the  pike 
gate,  and  the  wild  rush  of  the  young 
bucks  racing  each  other  home.  There 
was  a  rustle  in  the  hall,  the  closing  of  a 
door  below,  a  shutter  above,  and  the  house 
was  still. 

Not  a  breath  of  air  moved  outside. 
The  Avhite  aspens  were  quiet  as  the  som 
bre  aged  pines  that  had  been  brought 
over  from  old  Hanover,  in  Virginia,  and 
stood  with  proud  solemnity  befitting  the 
honor.  Across  the  meadow  came  the 
low  bellow  of  a  restless  bull ;  nearer,  the 
tinkle  of  a  sheep -bell;  and  closer,  the 
drowsy  twitter  of  birds  in  the  lilac-bushes 
at  the  garden  gate.  Beyond  the  lawn 
and  the  mock-orange  hedge  was  the  wood 
land,  with  its  sinuous  line  of  soft  shadow 
against  the  sky,  and  the  broken  moonlight 
30 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

under  its  low  branches.  Primitive  soil, 
that  Avoodland ;  no  plough  had  run  a  fur 
row  through  it ;  no  white  man  had  called 
it  his  own  before  the  boy's  great  fore 
father,  asleep  under  the  wrinkled  pines. 
How  full  of  peace  it  was — how  still ! 

Over  in  the  other  ell,  his  mother  had 
gone  to  sleep  with  the  last  prayer  on  her 
lips,  the  last  thought  in  her  heart,  for 
him.  She  had  taken  him  with  her  into 
dreamland,  no  doubt.  She  was  affected, 
his  mother,  so  a  teasing  old  aunt  had 
told  him— and  her ;  but  never  in  his  life 
could  he  remember  her  perfect  poise  of 
body  and  soul  to  waver,  her  sweet  dignity 
to  unbend.  Proud,  but  very  gentle,  her 
face  was  —  he  knew  but  one  other  like 
it.  "  To  be  your  father's  wife  and  your 
mother,  my  son,"  he  had  heard  her,  in 
simple  faith,  once  say.  That  was  her  mis 
sion  on  earth.  And  what  a  mission  he 
was  making  for  that  gracious  life ! 

In   the   dark  parlor,  just   through  the 

31 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

wall  of  his  room,  were  Jouett  portraits 
of  his  kinspeople — of  the  great  Marshall, 
whose  great  day  people  said  he  was  to 
bring  back.  Next  him  was  that  Mar 
shall's  youngest  son,  a  proud  -  looking 
young  fellow  with  a  noble  face  and  a 
quiet  smile,  who  had  died  early,  and  who, 
the  old  aunt  said,  was  the  more  brilliant 
of  the  two.  Rannie  was  like  that  great- 
uncle,  she  used  often  to  say.  And  he, 
Marshall  knew,  had  quietly  and  with 
beautiful  dignity  drunk  himself  to  death 
for  a  woman.  Men  could  do  that  in  his 
day.  Men  had  —  the  young  fellow  rose, 
shivering  from  another  reason  than  the 
cooling  night  air ;  it  still  was  possible. 

Over  the  quiet  fields  of  blue-grass  and 
young  wheat  and  blossoming  clover,  in 
the  capital,  Boone  Stallard  was  looking 
from  his  window  on  the  prison,  white  in 
the  moonlight  as  a  sepulchre,  and  on  the 
bleak  cliff  rising  behind  it ;  and  his  last 
thoughts,  too,  were  on  his  home  and  his 
32 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

people:  the  old  two -roomed  log  cabin 
with  its  long  porch  and  long  slanting 
roof,  Black  Mountain  rising  in  a  sheer 
wall  of  green  behind  it,  and  a  little  creek 
tinkling  under  laurel  and  rhododendron 
into  the  Cumberland  ;  his  mother,  gaunt, 
aged,  in  brown  homespun,  with  her  pipe, 
in  a  corner  of  the  fireplace ;  opposite,  his 
sister- — whose  husband  had  been  killed  in 
the  feud  —  with  a  worn  pallid  face  and 
dull  eyes;  his  half-brother,  cleaning  his 
Winchester,  no  doubt ;  the  children  in 
bed ;  the  talk  of  the  feud,  always  the  feud. 
They  were  all  Stallards  on  that  creek, 
just  as  in  the  next  bend  of  the  river  all 
were  Keatons — their  hereditary  enemies. 
They  were  "a  high-heeled  and  overbear- 
in'  race,"  the  Stallards  were ;  and  they 
were  hated  and  fought,  and  they  hated 
and  fought  back,  with  the  end  not  yet 
come.  All  his  life,  Boone  Stallard  had 
known  only  hardship,  work,  self-denial. 
There  was  no  love  of  sloth,  no  vice  of 
o  33 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

blood,  to  stunt  his  growth;  as  yet,  no  love 
of  woman  to  confuse  his  purpose,  nor  in 
spire  it. 

Not  once  did  the  two  currents  cross  but 
on  the  thinkers  themselves;  on  nothing 
else — not  even  on  Anne. 


IV 


A  WEEK  later  the  Mansion  was  thrown 
open,  for  the  third  time  during  the  ses 
sion,  to  the  law-makers  and  their  wives. 
Stallard,  Colton  said,  must  go ;  and  Col- 
ton's  word,  now,  was  to  the  good-natured 
mountaineer  little  short  of  law. 

He  had  found  an  unknown  ally  when 
he  opened  the  great  Kentucky  daily  on 
the  morning  after  his  first  fight.  There 
was  a  long  account  of  the  debate,  a  strong 
tribute  to  "  The  Cumberland  Cyclone," 
as  Colton,  the  correspondent,  called  him, 
and  an  editorial  on  the  question  that  bore 
the  distinctive  ear -marks  of  the  great 
man  in  charge.  That  same  morning, 
when  the  question  of  disruption  came  up, 
a  member  who  had  considerable  aspira- 
35 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

tion,  some  foresight,  and  no  principles  to 
make  or  mar  his  future,  and  who  knew  he 
would  help  himself  in  another  section  and 
not  harm  himself  in  his  own,  rose  and 
took  sides  with  Stallard,  emphasizing  the 
editor's  emphasis  of  Stallard's  idea  that 
the  mountain  people  must  some  day  gov 
ern  themselves,  and,  therefore,  would  be 
better  let  alone  now.  To  the  surprise  of 
all,  Marshall  rose  and  stated  frankly  the 
lack  of  positive  knowledge  on  which  he 
had  spoken  the  day  before.  While  he 
must  hold  to  certain  opinions  expressed, 
he  recognized  the  possibility  of  having 
done  the  mountain  people  wrong  in  cer 
tain  statements  made ;  that  time  would 
soon  prove. 

Meanwhile,  he  would  withdraw  his  mo 
tion,  with  the  consent  of  the  House,  and 
counsel  further  forbearance  on  the  part 
of  the  State.  It  was  graceful,  magnani 
mous,  gallant ;  but  Colton,  watching  the 
mountaineer's  face,  saw  not  a  muscle  of 
36 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

it  move.  Marshall's  bill  was  put  aside 
for  the  time.  The  mountain  members, 
headed  by  Jack  Mockaby,  drew  close  to 
Stallard  and,  before  noon  of  his  second 
day  at  the  capital,  Stallard  found  himself 
a  man  of  mark,  and  with  a  following  that 
in  all  legislative  questions  could  exact  con 
sideration.  And  for  the  hour  of  that  noon 
his  head  swam  and  got  steady  again ;  for 
his  brain  was  as  sane  as  his  purpose  was 
firm.  Of  his  gift  of  oratory,  he  took  as 
little  thought  as  a  bird  takes  of  its  gift  of 
song.  He  neither  drank  nor  gambled, 
and  as  he  kept  aloof  from  all  social  af 
fairs,  he  wasted  neither  his  energy  nor 
his  time.  Few  committees  of  importance 
were  appointed  upon  which  he  did  not 
have  a  place,  and  his  capacity  for  work 
was  prodigious.  In  Colton  he  came  at 
once  to  know  his  best  friend,  and  every 
few  days  he  saw  his  name  prominent  in 
the  reports  of  legislative  doings.  These 
would  slowly  make  their  way  home  to  the 
87 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

mountains,  and  Stallard  knew  his  seat  was 
secure  for  another  term  unless  the  feud 
intervened.  Once  even,  in  the  first  flush 
of  his  success,  the  dome  of  the  big  Capitol 
floated  a  little  while  along  the  horizon  of 
his  heated  vision,  and  sank.  For  Stal- 
lard's  second  thought  and  his  last  were 
ever  for  his  people  ;  and  he  watched  their 
welfare  with  an  eye  that  let  no  measure 
escape  that  might  be  of  possible  help  to 
them.  Thus  far  he  had  given  no  thought 
to  anything  but  work,  and  now  Colton 
said  that,  out  of  respect  to  the  Governor 
who  had  been  kind  to  him,  Stallard  must 
go  to  the  Mansion.  So  he  had  dressed 
himself  in  his  best — which  was  quite  bad 
— had  walked  twice  past  the  brilliantly 
lighted  old  house,  and  in  hopeless  inde 
cision  had  started,  for  the  second  time, 
home.  Inside,  Anne  sat  in  a  corner  of  the 
big  square  drawing-room,  watching  the 
late -coming  guests.  Colton  was  on  the 
sofa  beside  her  and  Marshall  stood  just  to 
38 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

one  side.  The  two  men  did  not  like  each 
other,  and  for  that  reason  Colton  rattled 
on  in  his  talk  recklessly.  The  receiving- 
line  of  young  women  in  white  was  broken, 
and  the  rather  chill  formality  of  the  occa 
sion  dissolved.  Occasionally  some  little 
woman,  tripping  past,  would  ask,  naively, 
"  Oh,  you  haven't  met  my  husband  ?"  And 
off  she  would  go  for  the  embryonic  states 
man.  Dress  and  manners  made  Anne  shud 
der  now  and  then,  but  no  sign  arose  above 
the  fine  courtesy  that  made  social  democ 
racy  in  her  own  home  absolute ;  and,  un 
failingly,  she  presented  Marshall,  who 
bowed  with  perfect  gravity  to  the  absurd 
little  ducks  and  curtseys  made  him.  Col- 
ton,  who  knew  everybody,  was  giving  pen- 
and-ink  sketches  right  and  left. 

They  were  all  there — from  the  Peavine 
to  the  Purchase,  through  blue-grass,  bear- 
grass,  and  pennyroyal;  from  Mammoth 
Cave  and  Gethsemane,  the  Knobs  and  the 
Benson  Hills;  from  aristocratic  Fayette 
39 


THE  KENTUCKIAN8 

and  Bourbon,  "sweet  Owen"  fortress  of 
democracy,  to  border  Harlan,  hot-bed  of 
the  feud  ;  from  the  Mississippi  to  Hell-fer- 
Sartain  Creek  in  bloody  Breathitt.  Those 
were  the  contrasting  soils,  social  sections, 
and  divisions  of  vegetation  on  which  the 
devil  was  said  to  have  slyly  put  a  thumb 
of  reservation  when  he  offered  the  earth 
to  his  great  Conqueror  ("  and  sometimes," 
said  Colton,  "  I  think  the  reservation  was 
granted").  All  this  the  magic  name  of 
old  Kentucky  meant  to  her  loyal  sons, 
who  are  to  this  country  what  the  Irish 
man  is  to  the  world ;  and  who,  no  matter 
where  cast,  remain  what  they  were  born — 
Kentuckians — to  the  end.  The  Virginia 
cavalier  was  there,  he  went  on,  with  a 
side-glance  at  Marshall ;  the  Scotch-Irish 
man,  who  had  taken  on  the  cavalier's  pol 
ish  and  lost  nothing  of  his  own  strength ; 
the  "  pore  white  trash  " — now  risen  in  the 
world;  the  kinless  nondescript — himself, 
for  instance ;  the  political  grandee  of  the 

40 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

cross-roads — he  of  the  Clay  manner  and  the 

Websterian  brow  across  the  room.     He  al- 

• 

ways  made  afternoon  calls  in  his  dress  suit. 
There  was  Jack  Mockaby  from  Breathitt, 
who  was  expecting  arrest  each  day  last 
year,  for  a  little  feud  of  his  own,  while  he 
was  in  the  House  making  laws  for  the  rest 
of  the  State.  The  gaunt  individual  at  the 
door  was  another  mountaineer.  He  had 
brought  his  wife  with  him  to  the  "  settle- 
mints."  Once  she  had  been  asked  if  she 
were  going  to  the  theatre.  She  "  'lowed 
she  was,  but  she  didn't  aim  to  take  part." 
And  she  did  go,  and  she  took  down  her 
hair  before  the  curtain  went  up,  gave  it  a 
little  brush  or  two,  and  slowly  rolled  it  up 
in  a  knot  at  the  back  of  her  head.  On  a 
fishing  trip,  Colton  had  taken  dinner  with 
one  of  this  member's  constituents.  They 
had  corn-bread  and  potatoes. 

"Take  out,  stranger,"  said  the  moun 
taineer.  "  Hev  a  tater ;  take  two  of  'em  ; 
take  damn  nigh  all  of  'em." 

41 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

Oh,  they  were  a  strange  people,  these 
mountaineers  —  proud,  hospitab^,  good- 
hearted,  and  murderous !  Religious,  too : 
they  talked  chiefly  of  homicide  and  the 
Bible.  He  knew  of  an  awful  fight  that 
came  up  over  a  discussion  on  original  sin. 
Yes,  they  were  queer ;  but  there  was  one — 
Boone  Stallard  was  his  name — Miss  Anne 
had  heard  him  speak  ?  Colton  thought  he 
could  make  something  of  him. 

"They  call  him  the  'Cumberland  Cy 
clone  '  now :  that's  mine,  that  phrase.  Pret 
ty  good,  isn't  it  ?  They  will  run  him  against 
Marshall  for  Speaker  next  year,"  he  added, 
with  innocent  malice ;  "  mark  my  words. 
He's  a  coming  man — but  he  doesn't  seem 
to  be  coming  here  very  fast.  He  said  he 
would.  If  he  doesn't  show  up  in  five  min 
utes,  I'm  going  after  him.  It  '11  be  his 
debut,  and  I'm  his  chaperon.  Ah — " 

The  information  was  not  worth  while. 
Though  smilingly  interested  in  Colton's 
light  nonsense,  she  was  glancing  now  and 
42 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

then  at  the  door,  where  her  father  was 
receiving  the  last  stragglers ;  and,  looking 
at  her,  Marshall  knew  when  she  saw  the 
mountaineer,  and  he  smiled :  her  interest 
amused  him.  Stallard's  big  form  was  in 
the  doorway.  His  eyes  were  roving  help 
lessly  up  and  down  the  room,  and  his  face, 
despite  its  gravity,  wore  so  pained  a  look 
that  the  girl  herself  half  rose.  But  the 
Governor  had  stepped  forward  and,  hold 
ing  the  new-comer's  arm,  was  leading  him 
across  the  room  towards  her. 

"  Anne,  I  want  to  present  Mr.  Stallard 
to  you — Mr.  Boone  Stallard.  Mr.  Mar 
shall,  Mr.  Stallard — you  two  should  know 
each  other ;  and  Mr.  Colton  you  know,  of 
course." 

The  girl  put  out  her  hand.  Marshall, 
with  punctilious  courtesy,  was  putting 
out  his  when  he  met  Stallard's  eye.  The 
mountaineer  knew  no  polite  law  that 
bade  him,  feeling  one  way,  to  act  anoth 
er  ;  and  what  he  felt,  he  made  plain.  Mar- 
43 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

shall  straightened  like  steel.  It  was  a 
declaration  of  war,  open,  mutual;  and 
Colton,  with  a  quick  breath,  half  rose  from 
his  seat.  The  Governor,  turning  away,  saw 
nothing,  and  Anne's  eyes  were  lowered 
suddenly  to  the  white  point  of  one  of  her 
slippers. 

"Pardon,"  said  Marshall,  with  quick 
tact;  "your  father  is  calling  me."  And 
he  bowed  himself  away  and  towards  the 
Governor,  who  was  passing  through  the 
door. 

Colton  turned  to  Anne's  friend,  Kather- 
ine  Craig,  who  sat  at  his  right,  and  whose 
eyes  had  lost  nothing.  Stallard  crossed 
his  big  hands  awkwardly  in  front  of  him, 
and  stood  with  one  foot  advanced  and  the 
knee  bent.  He  wore  a  great  Prince  Al 
bert  coat,  which  was  longer  in  front  than 
behind,  and  high  boots  which  showed  to 
their  tops  under  his  trousers.  They  were 
carefully  blackened,  and  the  feet  were 
large — so  was  the  man.  Anne  saw  all 

44 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

these  details  before  she  raised  her  eyes  to 
his,  and  then  for  a  while  she  quite  forgot 
them.  They  were  calm,  open  eyes  that 
she  saw,  quite  dark  but  luminous,  and  they 
quietly  held  hers  in  a  way  that  made  her 
wonder  then  whether  it  might  not  be  hard 
for  some  woman,  against  his  will,  to  turn 
her  own  aside.  Yet  they  were  timid  too, 
and  kindly,  while  the  strong  mouth  was 
for  the  moment  hard ;  it  still  held  the 
antagonism  that  elsewhere  in  the  rugged 
face  was  gone. 

"  I  heard  your  speech,"  she  said,  friend- 
lily.  "  I  want  to  congratulate  you.  You 
gave  us  all  a  surprise — especially  Mr.  Mar 
shall." 

"  Well,  I  am  very  glad  you  liked  it,"  he 
said,  slowly  and  with  great  care,  almost 
as  if  he  were  speaking  another  tongue. 
"  I  don't  recollect  that  I  saw  you  there.  I 
reckon  I  didn't  look  around  at  the  gallery." 

"No,"  she  said,  with   a  smile;    "you 
were  not  very  gallant." 
45 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

She  was  sorry  when  the  words  left  her 
mouth,  the  big  man  looked  so  helpless. 
But  no  woman  minds  if  the  strong  are 
shy,  and  she  went  on  a  little  blindly: 
"  Now  Mr.  Marshall  paid  us  a  pretty  com 
pliment."  If  she  were  uncertain  as  to  the 
little  start  he  gave  when  she  mentioned 
Marshall's  name  just  before,  she  was  not 
now.  The  repression  at  his  lips  spread  to 
his  eyes,  his  brow,  and  his  nostrils,  and  he 
did  not  look  pleasant.  She  did  not  know 
why  she  should  press  the  point  further, 
but  the  impulse  was  irresistible. 

"Mr.  Marshall  is  a  great  friend  of 
mine,"  she  added,  her  self-control  flutter 
ing,  and  she  raised  her  eyes  to  see  what 
should  come  into  his,  and  she  was  fright 
ened.  She  knew  little  of  the  strict  ethics 
that  governed  his  life  in  the  matter  of 
friendship;  if  Marshall  was  her  friend, 
then  she  was  the  mountaineer's  enemy; 
but  with  a  flash  she  caught  the  thought 
in  his  mind  and,  with  it,  too,  his  suspicion 
46 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

that  she  had  meant  to  make  the  fact  of 
her  friendship  for  Marshall  plain. 

"  I  hope  you  two  will  like  each  other," 
she  added,  quickly,  and  with  a  vague  pur 
pose  of  somehow  putting  herself  to  rights ; 
but  the  mountaineer  stared  merely. 

"  I  don't  think  we  will,"  he  said,  blunt 
ly.  Again  Anne's  eyes  went  for  refuge 
back  to  the  point  of  her  slipper,  and  luck 
ily  for  both,  just  then,  the  Governor  came 
to  take  Stallard  away.  Colton  and  Kath- 
erine  turned. 

"  How  did  you  get  along  ?"  asked  Col- 
ton.  Anne  laughed.  Her  cheeks  were  a 
bright  red,  and  Colton  began  to  wonder. 

"  Not  very  well.  It  was  dreadful.  He's 
half  a  savage.  He  made  me  afraid." 

Marshall  was  coming  up  behind  her, 
and  could  not  help  but  hear  what  pleases 
no  lover  —  fear  in  a  woman  of  another 
man.  His  manner  was  light  and  spirited, 
and  he  laughed  in  a  way  that  made  her 
look  sharply  up. 

47 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  Good -night."  His  face  was  flushed, 
and  Anne's  hardened  a  little  while  she 
looked  after  him.  Stallard  did  not  come 
to  bid  her  good-night,  and  she  guessed  the 
truth  —  that  he  did  not  know  it  was  nec 
essary.  Still  he  should  have  wanted  to 
come,  she  thought,  imperiously ;  and  she 
did  not  guess  the  truth  of  that  —  that, 
much  puzzled,  he  had  wanted  to  come; 
that  he  had  passed  the  rear  door  to  look 
at  her,  and  had  stood  a  long  while,  staring 
at  her  strangely ;  that  he  had  hesitated, 
through  sheer  fear,  to  speak  to  her  again, 
and,  vaguely  distressed,  had  slipped  away 
without  a  word  to  anybody. 

For  a  long  while,  after  the  guests  were 
gone,  she  sat  thinking  under  the  pink 
drop-light  in  her  father's  study.  It  had 
been  the  same  thing  over  and  over  for  so 
long  with  Marshall — peace,  a  foolish  quar 
rel,  the  wine  -  room  and  the  card  -  table ; 
some  wild  deed,  contrition,  pardon,  and 
peace  again.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the 
48 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

second  stage  now,  and  she  looked  a  little 
bitter,  and  then  she  sighed  helplessly,  as 
though  she  would  as  well  make  ready  now 
to  forgive  him  again.  When  she  thought 
of  Stallard,  she  found  herself  going  back 
again  to  Marshall's  graduating-day.  That 
was  odd,  but  the  fact  slipped  unnoticed 
through  her  consciousness,  for  she  was 
wishing  that  Marshall  had  the  strength 
that  she  believed  was  the  mountaineer's. 
"What  might  he  not  do  then  ?  Then,  per 
haps,  everything  might  be  otherwise. 
And  thinking  of  the  mountaineer  again, 
there  came  again,  out  of  the  past,  the  hot 
air  of  the  old  university  hall ;  and  now,  as 
then,  slie  was  walking  out  on  the  big 
portico  to  escape  it.  That  day  she  had 
dropped  her  parasol  down  the  great  flight 
of  stone  steps.  A  rough-looking  country 
boy  was  leaning  against  one  of  the  big 
pillars,  staring  at  her.  She  waited  for 
him  to  pick  it  up,  but  he  never  took  his 
eyes  from  her  face,  and  she  got  it  herself. 
D  49 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

She  had  thought  him  stupid  and  impolite, 
and  she  never  knew  what  fixed  the  inci 
dent  in  her  mind,  unless  it  was  the  boy's 
intent  stare  and  his  shock  of  black  hair. 
Even  now  her  memory  of  the  incident  had 
no  significance,  for  she  was  busy  thinking 
how  absurd  the  contrast  was  between  the 
mountaineer's  face  and  his  dress,  and  won 
dering  why  it  was  that,  once,  some  look  in 
the  man's  eyes  should  have  given  her  such 
a  pang  of  pity  for  him.  He  must  have 
miserably  misunderstood  her  that  night, 
and  no  wonder ;  she  must  make  that  right, 
and  quickly. 

"  Papa,"  she  said,  "  is  there  any  reason 
why  I  shouldn't  ask  that  Mr. — Boone— 
Stallard "  —  she  pronounced  the  name 
slowly — "  to  dinner  ?" 

"  Why,  no,  Anne ;  why  not  ?" 
"  Oh,  nothing,      I  didn't  know.     He's 
so  queer.     He's  so  diffident — it's  absurd  in 
such  a  big  man  —  and  then  he  isn't.     I 
wonder  that  he  came  to-night." 
50 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  It  was  Colton's  doing,  I  imagine,"  said 
the  Governor,  rising  to  fill  his  pipe ;  "  and 
then  I  suppose  he  thought  he  owed  espe 
cial  courtesy  to  me.  I  let  out  a  pretty 
bad  convict  on  parole  not  long  ago,  at  his 
request — a  mountaineer." 

"Who  is  he?1'  she  asked,  so  absent- 
mindedly  that  the  Governor  turned. 

"Who  is  who?"  he  answered,  smiling; 
and  then,  "  Why,  you  remember,  surely. 
Marshall  introduced  a  bill  to  abolish  his 
county  the  other  day.  He  belongs  to 
one  of  the  factions  that  are  making 
trouble  in  the  mountains.  I  suppose  one- 
fourth  of  the  people  in  his  county  have 
the  name  of  Stallard.  And  they  are  worse 
about  stretching  kinship  down  there  than 
we  are." 

The  girl  rose  to  go  to  her  room,  and 
the  Governor  called  to  her  again,  and  she 
stopped  under  the  light  of  the  stairway, 
with  her  dreaming  face  uplifted,  the  hem 
of  her  gown  raised  from  one  arched  foot, 
51 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  one  white  hand  on  the  banister — and 
nobody  there  to  see ! 

"  By-the-way,  can't  you  make  use  of  a 
trusty  for  a  day  or  two  in  the  garden  ? 
I'll  send  you  a  feudsman,  if  you  are  get 
ting  interested  in  the  mountaineers.  I 
made  still  another  trusty  not  long  ago,  at 
the  warden's  request.  The  mountaineers 
can't  stand  confinement,  he  says,  having 
lived  all  their  lives  in  the  open  air.  Can 
you  give  one  something  to  do  ?" 

Anne's  lips  parted  and  her  eyes  closed 
sleepily.  "  Yes,"  she  said. 


A  FORTNIGHT  later,  Anne  sat  in  the  shade 
of  her  grape-arbor,  directing  the  leisurely 
labor  of  the  "  trusty  "  who  had  come  over 
from  the  gloomy  prison  whose  high  gray 
walls  and  peaked  roof,  with  its  ceaseless 
column  of  black  smoke,  were  visible  over 
the  houses  that  sat  between. 

Her  dinner  had  taken  place  a  few  nights 
before.  Stallard  was  not  only  not  there 
— he  had  not  even  answered  her  note  of 
invitation.  Colton  laughed  when  she  told 
him.  He  could  not  explain  it,  but  he 
knew  why  the  mountaineer  had  probably 
not  come.  Stallard  had  been  hard  at 
work;  he  was  not  merely  an  orator;  he 
shirked  no  work,  and  he  read  law  steadi 
ly.  He  had  not  answered,  perhaps,  be- 

53 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

cause  he  did  not  know  the  social  need  of 
an  answer.  He  might  have  turned  up  at 
the  dinner  without  having  sent  his  ac 
ceptance;  that  was  as  likely  as  what  he 
had  done.  It  was  all  doubtless  true,  and 
the  girl  wanted  to  believe  that  it  was. 
Still,  it  was  the  harder  to  believe  for  the 
reason  that  it  was  altogether  of  a  piece 
with  the  usual  way  of  a  man  who  seemed 
to  swerve  aside  for  nothing,  and  who  bore 
himself  towards  her  as  she  had  all  her 
life  borne  herself  towards  all  men.  And 
vounc:  as  she  was,  Anne's  reign  had  been 

\j  o  o 

a  long  one.  Even  as  a  school -girl  she 
had  her  little  local  court  of  sweethearts, 
Avhich  widened  rapidly,  as  she  grew  older, 
through  the  county,  through  several  coun 
ties,  through  even  the  confines  of  the 
State.  It  was  a  social  condition  already 
passing  away ;  the  pretty  young  queen 
and  the  manly  young  fellows  doing  her 
honor  with  such  loyalty — openly,  frankly 
her  slaves — to  themselves,  to  one  another, 
54 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  to  the  world  ;  declaring  love  one  after 
another  in  turn,  leaving  her  with  a  pas 
sionate  resolution  to  throw  off  the  yoke, 
and  bending  meekly  to  it  again.  For 
usually  she  kept  the  lover  the  friend 
even  after  as  lover  he  was  hopeless,  if  the 
lover  ever  is.  Occasionally,  however,  some 
young  fellow,  a  little  fiercer  than  usual, 
would  stalk  away  through  the  hall,  bang 
the  door  a  little  more  loudly,  and  really 
come  back  no  more.  Then  Anne  would 
go  to  her  room  and  cry  half  the  night 
through,  to  learn  soon  that  he  had  gone 
elsewhere  for  solace,  and  that  her  place 
was  filled.  Soon  she  could  smile  when 
some  young  heart  went  broken  from  her 
to  mend  no  more ;  and,  thereafter,  she 
cried  sometimes  only  because  she  was  los 
ing  a  friend.  By  -  and  -  by  some  of  her 
courtiers  married,  some  went  other  ways, 
but  of  the  original  court  a  few  were  still 
left,  and  of  them  Marshall  was  one.  He 
was  the  oldest,  the  most  faithful  and  un- 
55 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

tiring.  His  strength,  aside  from  birth, 
was  in  oratory  and  politics,  for  which  the 
girl,  coming  from  a  race  of  lawyers  and 
statesmen,  had  an  innate  predilection ;  so 
that,  in  spite  of  his  wild  ways,  general  ex 
pectation,  which  looks  to  the  untiring  to 
win  in  love,  as  in  everything  else,  rested 
on  Marshall.  Still  he  had  not  won,  and 
Anne  kept  on  her  placid,  queenly  way, 
holding  every  man  her  friend  because  she 
was  fair  with  all  and  loved  no  one  less 
than  his  rival.  What  the  trouble  was,  no 
body  knew  precisely — not  Marshall — not 
even  Anne.  Once  her  mother,  remember 
ing  the  boy's  inheritance,  had  given  her 
gentle  warning  against  intrusting  herself 
to  him ;  and  his  reckless  way  of  life  kept 
the  warning  always  in  mind.  Always, 
perhaps,  Marshall's  perfect  loyalty  had 
kept  her  from  knowing  how  strong  her 
own  feeling  was  for  him.  And  then,  as 
she  grew  older,  she  slowly  came  to  exact, 
what  few  women  do,  that  a  man  shall  be 
56 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

making  an  honest  effort  to  realize  the 
best  that  is  in  him.  That  Marshall,  brill 
iant  and  winning  as  he  was,  had  never 
done.  It  was  the  contrast  in  this  one  par 
ticular  that  was  helping  arouse  her  inter 
est  in  the  mountaineer.  One  look  in  his 
face,  and  doubt  on  that  question,  as  to 
Stallard,  was  at  rest.  Moreover,  she  had  a 
swift,  sympathetic  insight  into  what  was 
best  in  the  humanity  around  her,  and  this 
told  her  that  in  this  rugged  rustic  was 
more  hidden  power  than  she  had  ever 
found  in  any  one  man.  He  was  the  first 
man  with  whom  it  had  been  necessary  for 
her  to  be  the  first  to  hold  out  her  hand, 
in  simple  kindliness  at  the  start,  and  then 
for  the  mere  self  -  acknowledged  reason 

G 

that  he  was  the  first  to  reach  her  intel 
lect,  as  somebody  might  some  day  reach 
her  heart.  Necessarily,  it  was  the  first 
time  she  had  met  with  no  response.  To 
say  that  she  was  piqued  would  be  absurd ; 
to  say  that  her  interest  Avas  not  deepened 
57 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

would  be  to  say  that  she  was  not  a  wom 
an  and  not  human.  She  had  thought  of 
the  man  a  good  deal ;  she  would  tell  any 
body  that.  She  wanted  to  know  of  him, 
and  Colton  had  told  her  much,  and  every 
thing  was  of  interest.  She  knew  noth 
ing  of  the  mountains,  nothing  of  the  peo 
ple  who  lived  in  them.  Since  she  had 
lived  at  the  capital,  she  had  watched  the 
raftsmen  coming  down  the  river;  once, 
she  had  seen  a  crowd  of  dusty,  wild-look 
ing  men  empty  from  the  train  under 
charge  of  an  officer,  and  she  had  been 
told  that  they  were  moonshiners ;  that 
was  all.  No  more  did  she  know  of  the 
highlands  of  the  east,  and  no  more  of  the 
people  who  sprang  from  them.  But  Col- 
ton — the  subject  was  getting  to  be  a  hobby 
with  him — had  told  her  all  he  knew  and 
much  more.  Her  personal  interest  in 
Stallard  helped  her  interest  in  his  people. 
He  was  the  first  mountaineer  she  had  seen 
close  at  hand.  The  second  was  in  her 

58 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

garden  before  her,  and  she  had  no  way 
of  knowing  that  both  were  exceptional. 
The  convict  was  young  and  rather  good- 
looking.  He  had  a  mat  of  close-cut  black 
hair  and  a  swarthy  face.  His  eyes  were 
dark,  bright,  open,  and  frankly  curious. 
The  face  was  almost  good,  except  for  the 
small,  loose,  beautiful  mouth,  which,  with 
all  its  easy  good-humor,  showed  to  a  close 
study  as  sensual  and  rather  cruel.  She 
had  hesitated  at  first  about  giving  him 
orders. 

"  Ah,  what  is  your  name,  please  ?" 

"  Buck,"  he  said,  without  looking  at  her. 

"  Buck  what  ?" 

"Buck's  enough,  hain't  it?"  he  said,  a 
little  surlily. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  quietly.  "  I  want  you 
to  go  on  that  side  and  hoe  around  those 
rose-bushes  there." 

The  young  fellow  went  to  work  Avithout 
a  word.  The  trusties  earn  their  liberty  at 
a  sacrifice  of  the  good  opinion  of  their  fel- 
59 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

low-prisoners ;  but  the  young  mountaineer 
was  sick  for  the  open  air;  moreover,  he 
was  doing  a  woman's  work  under  a  wom 
an's  supervision ;  and  he  was  not  pleased. 
He  worked  very  well,  but  he  seemed 
weak.  His  cheeks  soon  took  on  a  high 
color;  he  breathed  hard,  and  he  looked 
feverish.  The  stripes  must  be  hot  and  suf 
focating,  Anne  thought  on  a  sudden,  and 
she  spoke  to  him  again  very  kindly. 

"  You  must  stop  awhile  now ;  the  sun  is 
too  hot.  Sit  down  there  and  rest." 

The  convict  sat  down  readily  enough. 
Anne  turned  away  to  look  across  the 
street  and  nod  to  a  passing  friend,  and, 
when  she  turned  back,  he  was  looking  with 
boyish  directness  straight  at  her. 

"Hit's  Buck  Stallard." 

The  girl  started.  Then  it  dawned  that 
the  abrupt  giving  of  his  name  was  an 
apology,  and  she  smiled. 

"  You  come  from  Roland  County  ?" 

The  boy  nodded.     "  Yes,"  he  said. 

60 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  That's  where  all  the  trouble  is  going 
on?" 

"Yes."  She  wondered  why  he  didn't 
say,  "Yes,  ma'am."  "That's  what  I'm 
doin'  over  thar,"  he  went  on,  with  a  jerk 
of  his  thumb  towards  the  prison.  "  Thar's 
two  of  us  in  thar,  an'  I  reckon  thar'll  be 
more,  ef  the  boys  at  home  don't  watch 
out." 

Most  of  the  prisoners  would  say  they 
were  in  for  fighting,  for  manslaughter 
even,  rather  than  confess  to  theft  or  some 
other  petty  crime — a  curious  commentary 
on  the  public  sentiment  within  and  with 
out  the  sombre  walls.  Anne  knew  that, 
but  she  had  little  doubt  that  in  this  case 
the  convict  was  telling  the  truth,  and  she 
was  inured  to  the  point  where  she  did  not 
shrink. 

"  Ever  heerd  o'  Boone  Stallard  ?" 

The  question  took  her  off  guard,  and 
the  next  moment  she  felt  herself  coloring 
under  the  boy's  keen  look. 
61 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  calmly  ;  "  I  heard  him 
make  a  speech  the  other  clay." 

"  Did  ye  ?"  he  asked,  smiling.  "  Thar 
hain't  nobody  as  can  down  Boone  on  lan- 
guige.  Me  an'  Boone's  kin,"  he  said,  a 
little  proudly,  but  he  was  watching  her 
closely  and  feeling  his  way  with  care. 
"  We's  all  kin  down  thar." 

That  was  what  her  father  had  said,  and 
she  herself  knew  what  it  was  to  have 
many  kinspeople,  and  a  few  of  whom  she 
was  not  proud. 

"  Has  he  ever  taken  part  in  the  feud  ?" 
she  asked  ;  and  again  the  boy  eyed  her 
cautiously. 

"  Naw,"  he  said,  frankly,  satisfied  with 
his  inspection.  "  Boone's  al'ays  a-tryin'  to 
git  us  fellers  to  quit.  Boone's  fer  law  an' 
order  ever'  time,  Boone  is.  Thar  hain't 
nobody  down  thar  like  Boone.  He  ain't 
afeerd  nother.  Ever' body  knows  that. 
He's  plum'  crazy  'bout  the  sanctaty  of 
the  law  an'  his  dooty — that's  somep'n  he 
62 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

picked  up  from  you  furriners  when  he  was 
out  in  the  settlemints,  I  reckon.  He'll  git 
into  it  some  o'  these  days  now,  you  see; 
fer  he'll  go  ef  he  thinks  he  ought  to.  An' 
then  thar'll  be  Billy -hell  to  pay.  You 
see !" 

Again  the  girl  started,  but  the  boy  was 
looking  away  in  complete  innocence  of 
giving  offence,  absorbed  no  doubt  in  pict 
uring  just  what  would  happen  should 
Boone  Stallard  some  day  take  part.  She 
remembered,  too,  that  Col  ton  said  the 
mountaineers  still  talked  even  before  their 
women  with  Anglo-Saxon  freedom,  and 
that  their  oaths  were  little  more  to  them 
than  slang  was  to  the  outside  world. 

"Boone's  about  the  only  Stallard  as 
hain't  in  it ;  and  Stallards  air  as  thick 
down  thar  as  red-heads  in  a  deadenin'." 

"  As  what  /" 

"  Ked-heads  . . .  woodpeckers — in  a  dead 
enin' —  a  place  whar  folks  have  cut  the 
bark  off  o'  trees  to  kill  'em.  The  red- 
63 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

heads  goes  thar  'cause  hit's  easier  fer  'em 
to  peck  holes  in  dead  trees.  Sometimes  I 
think  you  furriners  knows  most  ever'thing, 
an'  agin  you  don't  seem  to  know  much." 
Anne  came  near  laughing  aloud.  Here 
was  a  character. 

"  "What  makes  you  fight  that  way  ?" 

The  boy  laughed.  "  Well,  suppose  some 
sorry  feller  was  to  shoot  your  brother  or 
your  daddy,  an'  the  high-sheriff  was  afeerd 
o'  him  an'  wouldn't  arrest  him.  whut 
would  you  do?  You  know  mighty  well. 
You'd  just  go  git  yo'  gun  an'  let  him  have 
it.  That's  what.  Then  mebbe  his  broth 
er  would  lay  way  you ;  an'  all  yo'  folks 
'ud  git  mad  an'  take  hit  up ;  an'  things 
'ud  git  frolicsome  ginerally.  Whut's  yo' 
name?" 

The  girl  had  to  answer,  the  question 
was  asked  with  such  frank  trust.'  "  Anne 
Bruce." 

The  boy  repeated  the  name  mechani 
cally,  and  then  looked  at  the  work  he  had 
64 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

done.  "  Whut  you  want  to  raise  so  many 
flowers  fer,  Anne  ?  "Whyn't  you  put  that 
ground  in  corn?" 

The  girl  reddened  in  spite  of  her  amuse 
ment.  "  You  must  call  me  Miss  Anne  or 
Miss  Bruce,"  she  said,  quietly. 

"  Miz  Anne,"  repeated  the  boy.  "  Who 
ever  heerd  o'  sech  a  thing?"  He  would 
have  laughed  had  not  her  face  been  so 
serious.  "  All  right,"  he  said,  placidly. 
"  But  we  don't  call  no  woman  '  Miz '  whar 
I  come  from  'ceptin'  they's  purty  ole  or  is 
married.  You  ain't  ole  enough,  /  know ; 
an'  you  ain't  married,  is  ye  ?" 

Anne  flushed  slightly,  but  there  was 
not  a  trace  of  impudence  in  his  tone,  and 
she  could  not  bring  herself  to  rebuke  his 
childlike  curiosity.  "No,  I'm  not  mar 
ried,"  she  said,  simply. 

But  the  boy  saw  something  was  wrong, 
and  with  a  look  of  sudden  ill-humor  rose 
to  his  work.  His  depression  was  momen 
tary  ;  he  seemed  to  have  the  light-hearted 

E  65 


THE  KENTUCKIA.NS 

irresponsibility  of  the  insane.  Already  he 
was  humming  to  himself  in  a  mournful 
minor ;  it  was  something  about  "  wild 
roses"  ;  the  intervals  were  strange  to  her 
ear,  and  the  tune  seemed  to  move  through 
at  least  three  keys.  Anne  remembered 
the  folk  songs  that  Colton  said  the  moun 
taineers  still  sang : 

'•To  jump  in  the  river  and  drown" — 

that  was  the  last  sorrowful  line ;  and  then 
he  veered  to  something  lively,  singing 
words  that  she  could  barely  hear : 

"  Chickens  a-crowin'  on  Sourwood  Mountain, 
Heh-o-dee-um-dee-eedle-dahdy-dee  ! 
Git  yo'  dogs  an'  we'll  go  huntin', 
Heh-o-dee-um-dee-eedle-dalidy-dee  !" 

It  had  the  darky's  rhythm  and  the 
darky's  way  of  dropping  into  the  minor 
on  the  third  line,  while  the  swing  of  the 
last  was  like  the  far-away  winding  of  a 
horn,  and  it  was  to  ring  in  her  ears  for 
years  to  come.  He  was  changing  now, 

66 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  she  smiled.  Colton  had  sung  that  to 
her ;  he  called  it  "  The  Dying  Injunction 
of  Johnnie  Buck." 

"  Oh,  Johnnie  Buck  is  dead, 
An'  the  last  words  he  said 
Was,  never  let  yo'  woman  have  her  way." 

There  was  but  one  verse,  and  he  sang  it 
over  and  over  while  she  watched  him,  try 
ing  to  realize,  to  understand,  what  Colton 
said ;  that  in  this  age,  this  day,  this  hour; 
in  her  own  land,  her  own  State,  and  with 
in  the  two  days'  gallop  of  a  thoroughbred 
of  her  own  home,  were  people  living  like 
the  pioneers,  singing  folk-songs  centuries 
old,  talking  the  speech  of  Chaucer,  and 
loving,  hating,  fighting,  and  dying  like  the 
clans  of  Scotland.  It  was  very  strange 
and  interesting,  and  for  no  reason  she 
sighed  deeply.  The  town  clock  was  strik 
ing  noon. 

"  You'd  better  go  to  dinner  now,"  she 
said,  "  and  come  back  this  afternoon." 
67 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  This  whut  ?"  The  mountaineer's  day 
has  no  afternoon. 

"This  evening." 

"Aw!"  Again  the  boy  laughed  frank 
ly.  Just  then  the  Governor  was  passing 
into  the  Mansion.  "  Who  is  that  ole  fel 
ler?" 

"You  mustn't  say  'old  fellow.'  You 
must  say  '  old  gentleman.'  That's  my 
father." 

"  Well,  I  be  durned !  Can  he  pardin  me 
out?" 

"  Yes,  he  could,  if  there  were  a  good 
reason." 

The  convict  was  looking  intently  at  the 
Governor  as  he  passed  through  the  door. 
His  face  had  grown  sullen  and  there  was  a 
new  fire  in  his  eyes. 

"An'  I  never  knowed  it  till  yestiddy," 
he  muttered;  "an'  my  time  'most  done. 
Hit  ain't  right,"  he  said,  fiercely. 

For  the  moment  he  forgot  the  girl,  and 
he  wheeled  quickly  to  her  with  a  sudden 
68 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

fear  that  he  had  uncovered  himself  to  a 
possible  enemy,  and  bent  his  sharp  black 
eyes  full  on  her.  She  was  puzzled  by  the 
change  in  his  face,  but  she  gave  him  a 
kindly  nod  and  turned  towards  the  house. 
Boone  Stallard  was  passing  the  gate,  as 
he  always  did  at  that  hour,  going  to  his 
dinner.  The  young  trusty  called  him  by 
his  first  name  and  Stallard  stopped,  but 
the  two  did  not  shake  hands.  The  moun 
taineer  spoke  to  Anne  without  raising  his 
hat. 


VI 


FOR  the  time,  peace  down  in  the  moun 
tains  took  away  the  cause  of  war  between 
Marshall  and  Stallard  at  the  capital,  but 
hardly  a  question  came  up  in  the  House 
but  the  tendency  was  plain  in  both  men 
to  take  opposing  sides;  and  always  the 
personal  note  of  enmity  was  frankly  dom 
inant.  In  consequence,  Anne  looked  for 
ward  with  some  anxiety  to  the  night  of 
her  dinner — the  dinner  to  which  Stallard 
had  promised  to  come.  He  was  deeply 
mortified,  Colton  told  her,  over  his  failure 
to  answer  her  note ;  so  to  show  that  she 
forgave  him,  she  had  asked  him  again. 
She  feared  nothing  openly  disagreeable ; 
Marshall  would  not  suffer  himself,  under 
her  roof,  to  be  drawn  into  that :  still,  the 

70 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

mountaineer's  blunt  hostility  might  keep 
her  continually  on  guard  and  put  the 
table  under  unpleasant  restraint;  for  the 
feeling  between  the  two  men  was  public 
talk,  as  her  interest  in  the  mountaineer 
was  getting  to  be. 

To  Marshall,  then,  she  gave  the  seat  of 
honor.  Colton  sat  on  her  left.  Stallard 
she  placed  at  her  father's  right,  and  next 
Katherine  Craig.  A  rather  talkative  news 
paper  man,  a  meteor  from  the  North  whom 
Colton  had  caught  while  he  was  still  blaz 
ing,  and  who,  for  Colton's  sake,  was  there, 
sat  midway.  Anne  could  not  reckon  as 
to  him,  being  an  unknown  quantity,  and 
she  little  dreamed  that  he  was  to  be  the 
dangerous  link  of  communication  which 
she  found  necessary  to  sever  with  a  tact 
ful  stroke.  He  was  making  a  trip  through 
the  South  to  get  a  comprehensive  grasp  of 
the  negro  question ;  and,  incidentally,  to 
turn  a  search-light  on  the  origin  and  con 
dition  of  the  poor  whites.  That  was,  in 
71 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

effect,  what  she  heard  him  tell  the  Episco 
pal  minister  as  they  were  rising  to  go  out 
to  dinner.  Now  the  clergyman,  who  sat 
opposite  him,  was  resuming  the  subject. 

"How  long  shall  you  stay?"  he  asked. 

"  Oh,  about  six  weeks,  I  suppose,"  was 
the  careless  answer. 

"  Stay  as  long  as  I  have,"  said  the  min 
ister,  with  a  pleasant  smile,  "  and  perhaps 
you  won't  write  anything." 

The  journalist  realized  that  he  was  talk 
ing  to  a  Northern  man,  and  his  face  lighted 
up. 

"  Why,  how  long  have  you  been  South  ?" 

"  Six  years,"  was  the  dry  answer,  and 
Anne  smiled. 

Throughout  the  meal  she  watched  the 
mountaineer  closely.  His  face  was  placid 
and  grave,  but  his  eyes  were  busy.  Noth 
ing  escaped  them.  He  did  nothing  that  he 
did  not  see  done  first ;  and  she  saw  him 
waiting  more  than  once  to  learn  what  it 
was  proper  to  do.  It  was  plain  that  he 

72 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

would  get  along ;  indeed,  he  had  got 
along.  That  she  noticed  when  he  entered 
the  drawing-room ;  and  now  Colton,  with 
the  kindliest  humor,  was  calling  her  atten 
tion  to  the  fact,  while  Marshall  was  en 
gaged  with  his  right-hand  neighbor. 

"  I've  been  tempering  the  cyclone  to  the 
shorn  lamb  of  conventionality,"  he  said. 
"I've  got  him  down  out  of  the  clouds 
now,  and  he  roars  gently.  I've  got  his 
hair  cut ;  and  did  you  observe  his  patent- 
leathers?  I  tied  that  four-in-hand.  He 
had  a  ready-made  bow  of  yellow  satin. 
I'll  get  him  out  of  that  Prince  Albert 
pretty  soon." 

"He  surely  has  improved.  How  did 
you  manage  it  so  quickly  ?" 

The  question  was  mechanical.  She 
knew  Colton  as  one  of  the  few  who  can 
give  advice  without  offence  to  anybody; 
but  she  was  watching  the  Northern  jour 
nalist,  who  was  vigorously  haranguing 
Keynolds  of  the  geological  corps.  Several 
73 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

times  she  saw  his  lips  frame  the  word 
"  mountaineer." 

"Oh,  he  was  easy  work.  He  went  to 
the  university  at  Lexington.  But  he's 
been  down  in  the  mountains  so  long  since 
then  that  he  has  lapsed  into  original  sin. 
That's  easy,  Reynolds  says,  down  there." 

Marshall  turned  just  then,  and  Colton 
took  up  the  pink  maiden  on  his  left. 
Stallard  was  not  talking  much.  Most  of 
the  time  he  was  shyly  listening  to  Kath- 
erine,  who  was  doing  her  best  to  engage 
him,  or  to  the  Governor ;  but  now  and 
then  he  would  turn  his  eyes  towards 
Anne,  and  she  was  pleased.  Once  she 
gave  him  a  friendly  smile  and,  from  his 
sudden  color,  she  knew  that  his  looking 
had  been  unconscious,  and  that,  too, 
pleased  her.  The  talking  was  so  spirited 
all  round  the  table  that  there  seemed  to 
be  no  possible  occasion  for  the  two  men 
to  come  into  contact.  She  began  to  won 
der  how  she  could  have  feared  it :  it  was 
74 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

hardly  possible  at  the  table,  and  only  by 
accident  could  they  clash  in  the  drawing- 
room  ;  and  then  she  was  quite  sure  that 
Col  ton  had  warned  the  mountaineer  on 
this  point  as  well.  It  was  just  while  she 
was  giving  a  long  sigh  of  relief  that  one 
of  those  curious  lulls  came  that  are  said 
to  silence  a  table  of  people  either  twenty 
minutes  before  or  twenty  minutes  after 
the  clock  strikes  an  hour.  Anne  gave  a 
low  nervous  laugh  that  made  Colton  turn 
quickly  towards  her.  The  meteor  was 
sputtering  through  the  sudden  quiet. 

"No,"  he  said,  with  emphasis.  "The 
accepted  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  moun 
taineer,  particularly  of  the  Kentucky 
mountaineer,  is  that  he  is  the  descend 
ant —  He  had  got  that  far  when  he  be 
came  conscious  of  the  intense  silence,  that 
everybody  was  listening,  and  that  Stal- 
lard's  calm  eyes  were  on  him.  Anne 
was  trembling  when,  to  her  relief,  the 
mountaineer  smiled.  He  had  learned  a 
75 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

great  deal.  "  —  of  exported  paupers  and 
convicts,  indents,  and  '  pore  white  trash,' " 
he  said,  quietly  and  quite  impersonally. 
"  I  don't  wonder  that  the  theory  has  got 
abroad,  because  so  little  is  known  of  the 
mountaineer  and  the  effect  of  his  environ 
ment,  but  I  think — 

"Allow  me,"  said  Reynolds,  opposite, 
who  was  sunbrowned  and  wore  spectacles. 
"  That  is  a  very  foolish  theory.  Some  of 
them  are  the  descendants  of  those  people, 
of  course.  There  are  more  of  them  in  the 
mountains  than  in  the  blue -grass,  natu 
rally;  but  the  chief  differences  between 
them  and  us  come  from  the  fact  that  they 
have  been  shut  off  from  the  world  abso 
lutely  for  more  than  a  hundred  years.  Take 
out  the  cavalier  element,  and,  in  rank  and 
file,  we  were  originally  the  same  people. 
Until  a  man  has  lived  a  year  at  a  time 
in  the  mountains  he  doesn't  know  what  a 
thin  veneer  civilization  is.  It  goes  on  and 
off  like  a  glove,  especially  off.  Put  twenty 
T6 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

average  blue -grass  families  down  in  the 
mountains  half  a  dozen  miles  from  one 
another,  take  away  their  books,  keep  them 
there,  with  no  schools  and  no  churches, 
for  a  hundred  years,  and  they  will  be  as 
ignorant  and  lawless  as  the  mountaineer  " 
— with  a  nod  of  "saving  your  presence " 
to  Stallard — "and,  with  similar  causes, 
fighting  one  another  just  the  same." 

It  was  a  bold  speech,  but  nobody  there 
had  the  better  right  to  make  it,  for  none 
there  was  of  better  blood.  The  pure  grati 
tude  in  Stallard's  face  was  pathetic.  Mar 
shall  had  grown  grave,  and  Anne  saw  a 
paleness  about  his  lips. 

"You  mustn't  say  a  word,"  she  said, 
seriously,  but  she  spoke  too  late. 

"  Would  we  be  assassinating  each  other 
from  ambush,  too  ?"  he  asked,  with  his  lids 
lowered  and  quietly,  but  in  a  way  that 
made  Stallard  lay  down  his  fork,  drop  his 
hands  into  his  lap,  and  wait. 

A  look  from  Anne  stopped  Reynolds's 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

answer.  "You  mustn't  go  any  further 
now,"  she  said,  laughingly,  "  or  I'll  have 
to  take  part;  and  I  don't  know  whose  part 
I  should  take.  My  great-great-^^a^-grand- 
mother  lived  in  a  log  cabin — didn't  she, 
papa? — and  did  her  own  cooking.  They 
went  back  into  the  mountains  for  a  while, 
when  game  got  scarce  in  the  blue-grass. 
Suppose  they  had  stayed.  I  might  be  a 
mountaineer  myself,  and  be  in  a  feud. 
Dear  me,  somebody  might  be  calling  me 
'  pore  white  trash !' " 

The  light  manner  of  the  girl  was  serious 
enough  to  comfort  Stallard  unspeakably. 
It  held  Marshall  back  with  a  humor  that 
had  no  sting  for  him.  Reynolds  was  smil 
ing;  Colton,  dissolved  in  quiet  wonder. 

The  meteor,  after  flickering  once  or  twice 
like  a  dying  tallow  dip,  had  encountered 
a  dangerous  light  in  Stallard's  eye  and 
had  quite  gone  out.  The  storm-cloud  was 
gone,  and  the  men  were  left  to  their  ci 
gars.  Stallard  did  not  smoke,  and  the 
78 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

Governor  took  him  to  the  library,  across 
the  hall.  Two  State  senators  had  Mar 
shall  between  them  over  an  axe  they 
wanted  the  lower  house  to  grind.  The 
journalist  and  the  clergyman  had  drawn 
together,  and  Revnolds  had  Colton  and 

/  */ 

two  others  at  the  end  of  the  table,  and 
was  telling  a  story.  Anne  sat  near  the 
folding -doors,  which  were  slightly  ajar, 
and,  as  the  ladies  opposite  were  on  some 
domestic  theme  and  taking  in  her  presence 
only  now  and  then  with  a  glance,  she  could 
not  help  hearing ;  and  after  the  first  words 
she  frankly  listened. 

"  Maybe  you  can  use  it,  Colton,"  Reyn 
olds  was  saying.  "  You  remember  I  was 
captain  of  the  football  club  at  the  uni 
versity  ?  Well,  one  day,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  season,  one  of  the  fellows  got  hurt, 
and  I  had  to  take  a  green  substitute. 
There  were  only  some  Bible  students  out 
there  looking  on — the  fellows,  you  know, 
who  dye  their  linen  dusters  for  overcoats 
79 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

in  winter — and  one  of  them  stepped  out. 
'  I  don't  know  the  game,  pardner,'  he  said, 
'  but  I  reckon  I  can  tote  that  ball  wher 
ever  you  wants  me.'  It  was  funny  to  hear 
him  drawl  it  out ;  but  he  was  a  big  chap, 
and  I  took  him.  The  ball  did  come  to 
him  presently,  and  he  got  it  off  the  ground. 
'  Whar'd  ye  say  take  it  ?'  he  asked,  holding 
it  above  his  head,  while  two  little  fellows 
on  the  other  side  were  jumping  up  after 
it  like  dogs  for  a  piece  of  bread.  '  Run 
for  the  goal!'  I  yelled.  'Whut,  them 
stakes  ?'  he  drawled.  '  Yes,  you  fool, 
run?'  He  gave  me  one  look  as  much  as 
to  say,  '  Well,  I'll  attend  to  you  pres 
ently  ' ;  and  then  he  started,  with  the  ball 
in  one  hand  and  knocking  men  right  and 
left  with  the  other,  just  as  though  they 
were  tenpins,  and  everybody  yelling, 
'foul.'  He  never  stopped.  One  man  was 
on  his  back  and  two  were  swinging  to  his 
waist,  when  he  was  within  ten  feet  of  the 
goal.  He  thought  he  had  to  go  under  it, 
80 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  he  staggered  those  ten  feet  sidewise 
and,  with  the  crowd  on  him,  got  through. 
'  Is  that  the  game,  pardner  ?'  he  asked, 
when  the  boys  let  him  up.  '  Well,  I 
reckon  I  can  do  that  all  day.  Hit's  purty 
hard  on  a  feller's  clothes,  though.'  And  we 
could  never  get  him  to  play  again.  He 
said  he  hadn't  the  time,  but  I  believe  it 
was  his  clothes  (we  didn't  have  football 
suits  in  those  days).  He  came  around  to 
see  me  about  calling  him  a  fool,  and  I 
wasn't  long  apologizing,  either.  Well, 
that  fellow  came  over  into  the  College  of 
Arts  and  turned  out  a  remarkable  orator. 
He  actually  made  his  speech  at  Commence 
ment  from  a  slip  of  notes  in  his  hand." 

Colton  was  nodding  his  head.  "I  re 
member,"  he  said. 

"  Well,  Colton,  that  fellow  was  your  cy 
clone.  That  was  why  I  stood  up  for  him." 

Anne  heard  Colton's  exclamation  of  sur 
prise,  and  then  no  more ;  but  she  had  been 
busy  with  memories,  too,  and  a  mystery 

F  81 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

was  clearing.  Once  more  it  was  Mar 
shall's  Commencement  day.  Again  she 
felt  the  stifling  heat  and  saw  the  portico, 
her  parasol  on  the  flight  of  steps,  and  the 
boy  against  one  of  the  big  pillars,  w7ith 
his  fixed  stare  and  his  head  of  unruly 
black  hair.  The  incident  came  vividly 
back  while  Reynolds  was  telling  the  story, 
and  she  looked  at  Stallard  closely  when 
the  men  came  back  into  the  drawing- 
room.  It  was  quite  possible;  she  would 
learn  if  he  were  the  same.  It  was  an  odd 
cast  of  fate  if  he  were. 

Marshall  went  at  once  to  the  piano  to 
select  a  song  for  her.  He  could  both  sing 
and  play,  but  he  would  rarely  do  either. 
Music  and  art,  for  men,  at  least,  are  yet  in 
serious  disfavor  through  the  South,  and  it 
is  not  wise  for  a  man,  with  the  serious 
purpose  of  law  or  politics  before  him,  to 
show  facility  in  light  accomplishments. 
When  Anne  sang,  Stallard's  eyes  never 
left  her  face.  He  was  leaning  against  a 

82 


"MARSHALL  WENT   AT  ONCE  TO  THE  PIANO " 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

column  at  the  entrance  to  the  dining-room, 
with  his  hands  behind  him,  his  shoulders 
fallen  forward,  his  head  sunk  back,  his 
lips  slightly  apart— and  once  more  Anne 
saw  the  young  rustic  against  the  pillar, 
and  met  his  curious  look  again.  Only, 
when  she  smiled  now,  there  was  in  his 
eyes  something  new,  personal,  eager,  soft 
ened,  and,  on  a  sudden,  a  surprised  flash  of 
such  unreckoning  intensity  that  she  falter 
ed  in  her  song,  and  did  not  look  towards 
him  again.  The  guests  rose  to  go  soon 
after  she  was  done,  but  Stallard  stood 
where  he  was ;  and  when  Col  ton  called 
him  by  name  and  he  turned,  his  eyes 
looked  as  though  he  had  been  suddenly 
awakened  from  sleep.  The  two  passed 
Marshall  on  their  way  to  Anne,  but  Stal 
lard  seemed  not  even  to  see  him.  He  was 
still  looking  at  Anne,  who  gave  him  a 
friendl}7",  half-frightened  smile,  and  passed 
him  on  writh  Colton.  Marshall  stayed  be 
hind.  The  mountaineer  could  hardly  find 

83 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

his  hat  in  the  hallway  and,  as  he  started 
out,  he  turned  again  as  though  he  would 
go  back  into  the  parlor.  lie  seemed 
dazed. 

"I  believe—"  he  said,  hesitating^,  and 
Colton,  wondering  what  the  matter  was 
and  fearing  that  he  might  do  some  breach 
of  propriety,  took  him  by  the  arm  and  led 
him  out  the  door  and  into  the  starlight. 


VII 


THE  next  week  Stallard  disappeared  al 
together.  Marshall,  too,  was  rarely  in 
evidence,  through  a  fixed  principle  of  his. 
One  of  Anne's  suitors  had  come  in  from 
another  part  of  the  State,  and  Marshall, 
after  showing  the  stranger  every  possible 
courtesy,  as  was  his  custom  with  his  ri 
vals,  hospitably  left  the  field.  After  the 
following  Sunday,  the  stranger  was  gone 
the  way  of  so  many  strangers  before  him, 
and  Marshall  smiled  and  resumed  his  vis 
its  to  the  Mansion.  But  Stallard  stayed 
on  in  hiding.  He  came  once  to  pay  his 
dinner  call,  but  that  was  plainly  Colton's 
doing;  several  others  were  there,  and 
Anne  said  nothing  to  the  mountaineer 
alone.  She  had  asked  him  to  come  again, 

85 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  lie  had  not  come.  Colton  said  he  was 
hard  at  work,  Katherine  thought  him  shy, 
and  Anne  regretted  that  she  had  not  been 
more  friendty. 

Several  times  the  young  trusty  had  been 
over  to  hoe  in  the  garden.  Anne  made 
many  efforts  to  find  his  conscience,  to  im 
plant  therein  a  seed  of  regeneration,  but 
she  soon  gave  him  up  as  hopeless.  She 
was  astonished  by  his  knowledge  of  the 
Scriptures — for  sometimes  the  mountain 
eer  knows  the  great  book  from  cover  to 
cover — and  by  the  distant  application  of 
them  to  his  personal  life.  He  had  "  heerd 
all  that  afore,"  he  said,  with  some  superi 
ority.  "  He  had  wrastled  with  the  Sperit, 
an'  he  couldn't  'come  through.'  He  was 
jus'  a-snortin'  fer  conviction,  he  was." 
Once  she  asked  him  why  they  did  not  set 
tle  their  quarrels  down  in  the  mountains 
with  their  fists  instead  of  with  knives  and 
pistols  —  as  though  her  own  people  did 
that. 

86 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  All  right,"  he  said.  "  S'posin'  a  feller 
does  somep'n  to  you.  You  go  fer  him  fist 
an'  skull,  gougin'  an'  bitin'.  You  gits 
whooped !"  he  concluded,  triumphantly. 

"  "Well,"  she  said,  "  that  isn't  a  disgrace." 

"All  right.  Then  s'posin',  the  next 
time  he  sees  ye,  he  crows  over  ye.  What 
you  goin'  to  do  then  ?" 

The  problem,  aside  from  religion,  which 
had  to  be  laid  aside,  was  insoluble.  The 
boy  was  an  interesting  puzzle  to  her.  He 
was  so  frank  a  heathen.  His  wickedness 
was  such  a  thing  of  impulse  and  odd  rea 
soning.  His  curiosity  was  so  absurdly 
childlike,  so  removed  from  impertinence. 
He  never  made  a  word  of  thanks  for  the 
little  things  she  gave  him,  and  yet  she 
saw  that  he  was  not  unappreciative.  He 
repressed  his  frankness  of  speech  a  good 
deal,  and  he  showed  his  consideration  in 
other  little  ways.  A  quicker  native  in 
telligence  she  had  never  seen.  His  nature 
was  alert,  foxlike,  elusive;  and  his  sense 
87 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

of  humor  was  a  strange  thing.  He  was 
constantly  picking  up  little  differences  be 
tween  her  life  and  speech  and  his  at  home. 
He  heard  somebody  call  "  pants  "  trousers, 
for  instance,  and  over  that  he  had  a  fit  of 
derisive  laughter.  Indeed,  what  amused 
her  most  was  his  perfect  complacence  with 
his  way  of  life  and  thinking ;  his  unques 
tioning  faith  that  his  way  was  the  right 
way,  and  any  other  way  justly  a  matter 
of  surprise,  comment  and  ridicule.  It  sug 
gested  to  Anne  parallelisms  elsewhere,  as 
circles  widen,  and  helped  her  own  breadth 
of  view  in  judging  him.  "What  the  boy 
had  done  to  be  in  prison  she  did  not 
know.  She  had  not  thought  to  ask  her 
father ;  she  could  not  ask  the  boy  the  first 
morning  he  came;  and,  after  that,  she 
thought  she  would  rather  not  know,  for 
his  own  sake  and  for  the  sake  of  his 
kinsman,  Boone. 

Meanwhile    the   days   lengthened,  and 
Anne  took  long  drives  in  the  slow  twi- 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

lights,  sometimes  with  Marshall,  but  usu 
ally  with  Katherine  Craig ;  and  the  con 
stant  cry  of  the  mountaineer's  nature  for 
open  air  led  Boone  Stallard  on  long  walks 
into  the  fields  to  keep  his  blood  running 
and  his  brain  clear.  Often  Anne,  with 
Marshall  or  with  Katherine,  met  the  moun 
taineer  miles  from  town,  striding  the  road 
with  his  hat  off;  and  sometimes,  driving 
alone,  she  caught  a  glimpse  of  his  big 
frame  moving  across  Arnold's  Wold  in 
the  late  dusk.  That  was  as  close  as  she 
ever  saw  him ;  for  resolutely  he  kept  his 
distance  from  her,  and  the  tractive  force 
of  novelty  had  its  effect  with  Anne.  She 
wanted  to  see  the  man  again  and  to  talk 
with  him.  It  was  a  fact,  frankly  con 
fessed  to  Katherine  —  to  anybody  who 
would  not  have  misunderstood  her.  She 
was  curious  about  his  past,  his  purpose, 
his  people.  So  overtaking  Colton  with 
the  mountaineer  one  afternoon  on  the 
edge  of  town,  she  and  Katherine  took 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

them  both  into  the  carriage  and  drove 
down  the  river  and  out  through  the  Ben 
son  Hills.  It  was  like  crossing  the  bor 
der-line  of  her  life  and  his  when  they 
passed  a  little  cross-roads  store.  Several 
horses  were  hitched  to  the  fence  near  by. 
Several  men  were  whittling  on  the  high 
stoop.  More  were  pitching  horseshoes  up 
the  dirt  road,  and  at  the  blacksmith's  shop 
beyond,  three  stalwart  young  fellows  and 
a  fat  old  farmer  were  playing  marbles. 
Stallard  smiled  as  though  the  scene  were 
familiar.  A  little  farther  on  was  a  two- 
roomed  house,  half  of  which  was  built  of 
logs.  At  the  wood -pile  and  leaning  on 
his  axe,  was  a  tall,  gaunt  fellow,  with  a 
sunburnt  blond  beard,  his  trousers  in  his 
boots,  and  the  brim  of  his  slouched  hat 
curved  over  his  forehead.  Farther  still,  a 
mile  or  more,  they  came  upon  a  log  cabin 
with  a  grape-vine  over  the  door.  An  old 
woman,  with  a  basket  on  one  arm,  Avas 
pushing  through  the  rickety  gate.  She 
90 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

turned  her  face  towards  them  as  they  pass 
ed,  and  peered  as  though  she  were  strain 
ing  her  eyes  through  darkness. 

"Howdy,  mother?"  said  Stallard. 

The  old  woman  gave  some  quavering 
answer,  and  Stallard  looked  back  once. 
It  was  the  first  time  he  had  opened  his 
lips,  and  the  kindness  of  his  voice  touched 
Anne. 

"  Some  people  down  in  these  hills  are 
like  your  people,  Stallard,"  said  Colton. 
"  I  don't  know  whether  they  floated  down 
the  river,  or  whether  it's  because  it's  just 
hilly  down  here.  They  don't  have  as 
many  curious  words  as  you  folks  have; 
they  don't  have  feuds ;  and  they  don't  call 
the  blue -grass  the  '  settlemints,'  and  us 
blue -grass  people  'furriners,'  but  other 
wise  they  are  pretty  much  the  same." 

Several  times  Katherine,  who  sat  with 
Stallard  on  the  rear  seat  of  the  old-fash 
ioned  victoria,  had  tried  to  draw  him  out; 
and  now  Colton's  purpose  apparently  was 
91 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

to  start  the  mountaineer  talking,  but  he 
only  laughed  good-naturedly  at  the  dif 
ferentiating  characterization  that  Colton 
tossed  off,  and  settled  back  into  silence. 

"It's  all  isolation,"  Colton  went  on; 
"  that's  what  Reynolds  \vas  going  to  say 
the  other  night.  Isolation  arrests  develop 
ment,  crystallizes  character,  makes  a  people 
deteriorate.  That's  his  idea,  and  he  says 
the  Kentucky  mountaineer  has  been  the 
most  isolated  of  all  the  Southern  moun 
taineers — of  whom,  by-the-way,  there  are 
about  three  millions,  with  a  territory  as 
big  as  the  German  Empire.  He  has  seen 
fringed  hunting  -  shirts,  moccasins,  and 
coon -skin  caps  in  the  mountains  at  this 
late  day.  He  swears  that  an  old  moun 
taineer  once  told  him  about  the  discovery 
of  America  by  Columbus.  Reynolds  lis 
tened,  solemn  as  an  owl.  The  old  chap 
called  himself  a  'citizen,'  Reynolds  a  'fur- 
riner,'  and  Columbus  one  of  the  '  outland 
ish.'  He  was  a  sort  of  patriarch  in  his 
92 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

district,  a  philosopher ;  he  was  the  man 
who  delivered  the  facts  of  progress  to  the 
people  about  him,  and  it  never  occurred 
to  him  that  anybody  as  young  as  Reyn 
olds  might  know  about  Columbus.  The 
old  fellow  talked  about  the  Mexican  war 
as  though  it  had  been  over  about  ten 
years,  and  when  he  got  down  to  the  Se 
cession,  well,  he  actually  hitched  his  chair 
up  to  Reynolds's  and  dropped  his  voice  to 
a  whisper.  '  Some  folks  had  other  idees,' 
he  said,  ;  but  hit  was  his  pussonal  opinion 
that  niggahs  was  the  cause  of  the  war.' 
Think  of  it!  And  when  Reynolds  left, 
the  old  man  followed  him  out  to  the 
fence  :  '  Stranger,'  he  said,  '  I'd  ruther  you 
wouldn't  say  nothin'  about  what  I  been 
tellin'  ye.'  He  was  one  of  the  few  rebel 
sympathizers  in  that  neighborhood,  and 
he  feared  violence  at  that  late  day  for 
talking  too  freely  about  the  war.  Reyn 
olds  claims  that  the  mountaineers  were 
loyal  to  the  Union  in  '61  because  they 
93 


T    E  FFN 

hadn't  o          ,ie   fight  of  1776,  and 

that  those  feudb  i.e  the  spent  force  of  the 
late  war.  There  were  more  slave-holders 
among  the  Kentucky  mountaineers ;  for 
that  reason,  they  were  more  evenly  divided 
among  themselves ;  the  war  issue  became 
a  personal  one,  and  isolation  kept  them 
fighting.  So  you  have  to  go  back  to  the 
Revolution  to  understand  the  mountaineer, 
and  you  must  give  him  a  lonely  century  in 
which  to  deteriorate  before  you  can  judge 
him  fairly.  Consider  his  isolation,  says 
Reynolds,  and  the  wonder  is  not  that  he 
is  so  bad,  but  that  he  isn't  worse." 

Colton  could  imitate  the  dialect  well, 
and  Anne  listened  with  amused  interest. 
Stallard  laughed  and  nodded  affirmatively, 
but  all  the  while  his  eyes  were  on  the 
passing  fields.  They  had  turned  off  from 
the  river  now  and  through  the  hills  into 
Anne's  land  —  the  blue-grass.  Back  tow 
ards  the  town  was  a  soft  haze ;  before 
them,  all  was  clear  and  brilliant.  They 
94 


THE  KENTUCKIA.NS 

had  left  the  locust  blossoms  dropping 
meaninglessly  into  the  streets.  Here  in 
the  fields,  Nature  was  making  ready  for 
the  days  when  she  can  sit  with  folded 
hands,  brooding  and  happy  over  work  that 
is  all  but  done.  The  blue-grass  was  pur 
pling  into  soft  seas,  that  rocked  as  proud 
ly  in  the  wind  as  the  heading  wheat  and 
barley  and  the  young  green  oats,  whose 
silver-gray  would  be  the  last  passing  sheen 
of  the  summer's  glory.  Already  the  rifled 
clover  blossoms  were  drooping  their  heads 
as  the  gray  spikes  of  timothy  shot  exult 
antly  above  them.  Now  and  then,  from 
the  road-side,  came  the  low,  sweet,  aim 
less  plaint  of  a  little  brown  songster,  whose 
name  Anne  had  never  learned.  Two  king 
birds  were  chasing  a  crow  towards  a  wood 
land.  Out  in  the  meadow,  a  starling  was 
poised  over  his  nesting  mate,  balancing 
against  the  breeze,  and  swearing  fealty 
for  one  happy  month  by  the  crimson  on 
his  wings.  Quail  were  calling  from  the 
95 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

•wheat,  and  larks  were  wheeling  and  sing 
ing  everywhere.  Sturdy  farm-houses  of 
plain  brick  stood  out  here  and  there  from 
the  sunlit  fields,  and  now  and  then  an 
avenue  of  locusts  gave  sight  of  a  portico 
with  great  pillars  running  two  stories 
high.  It  wras  a  scene  of  rich  peace  and 
plenty,  and  Stallard's  interest  was  eager, 
but  Anne  noticed  his  face  sadden.  She 
remembered  this  afterwards,  as  she  recall 
ed  other  impressions  of  the  drive,  when 
she  had  a  key  to  the  meaning  of  them. 
Once  only,  when  one  of  the  mountaineer's 
questions  to  Col  ton  showed  how  well  he 
knew  the  country,  could  she  ask  him  if 
he  had  not  been  to  the  blue-grass  before. 

"You  went  to  the  university,  didn't 
you?"  she  said. 

The  careless  query  seemed  almost  to 
startle  him.  He  turned  quickly  to  her 
and,  for  the  first  time,  looked  straight  into 
her  eyes. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  simply,  and  he  seemed 
96 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

to  be  waiting  for  another  question  that 
was  on  Anne's  lips ;  but  his  look  now 
brought  back  a  sharp  memory  of  his  face 
on  the  night  of  the  dinner,  and  made  her 
shrink  from  the  question  before  Colton 
and  Katherine,  as  she  knew  she  would 
shrink  if  she  were  with  him  alone.  If 
he  were  the  same,  and  if,  as  she  suspected, 
he  remembered  her,  why  was  he  so  palpa 
bly  making  of  the  matter  such  a  mys 
tery  ? 

It  was  a  short,  swift  ride,  but  nobody 
guessed  the  significance  of  it  to  the  moun 
taineer.  Only  Anne  noticed  that  when 
they  turned  from  the  gray  haze  settling 
over  the  blue-grass  ahead  of  them,  back 
to  the  smoke  haze  over  the  town,  Stal- 
lard  sank  into  a  moodier  silence  still ;  and 
when  they  reached  the  darkening  hills, 
something  in  his  face  assailed  her  once 
more  with  an  unaccountable  pity  for  him. 
They  were  passing  the  old  woman's  cabin 
at  the  time,  and  Anne's  eyes  followed  his 
G  97 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

through  the  open  door,  where  the  old 
granny  was  bending  over  a  fire,  and  the 
light  showed  the  rude  table  set  for  the 
rude  supper,  and  other  hard  details  of  the 
room.  To  her  it  was  merely  a  passing 
picture  etched  by  the  light  against  a  dark 
little  ravine,  but  had  she  known  the  mem 
ories  it  brought  to  Stallard,  she  would 
have  understood  the  sudden  shadow  in  his 
face.  The  quick  throb  of  her  sympathy 
then  made  her  shake  off  straightway  what 
she  chose  to  regard  as  a  silly  fear;  and 
when  they  stopped  at  the  Mansion,  and 
Colton  was  climbing  out,  she  said  to  Stal 
lard,  quite  frankly  : 

"  I  wish  you  would  come  to  see  me.  I 
want  to  know  all  about  the  mountains  and 
the  feuds — and  everything." 

Stallard  did  not  answer  at  once,  but 
looked  at  her  so  long  and  so  searchingly 
that  she  began  to  flush,  and  Katherine, 
from  sheer  embarrassment,  rose  quickly 
to  take  Colton's  outstretched  hand,  so  lit- 

98 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

tie  did  the  mountaineer  seem  at  that  mo 
ment  to  be  aware  of  her  presence  or  to 
care  who  might  hear  what  he  said. 

"I'll  tell  you  anything  on  earth  }7ou 
want  to  know — some  day." 

The  tone  of  his  voice  made  Colton 
start,  and  brought  dead  silence  to  the 
four. 

Marshall  was  coming  down  the  steps, 
and  instinctively  Anne  covered  her  con 
fusion  with  a  look  of  dismay  to  Kathe- 
rine ;  she  had  had  an  engagement  with 
Marshall ;  she  was  getting  back  too  late, 
and  he  would  be  angry.  Seeing  him, 
Stallard,  who  had  stepped  to  the  pave 
ment,  turned  sharply  from  Anne,  who  was 
waiting  for  him  to  help  her  out,  and  held 
his  eyes  on  Marshall  until  the  latter  was 
several  paces  down  the  street.  It  was  a 
strange  thing  to  do,  and  it  mystified  even 
Colton :  but  it  was  merely  the  mountain 
eer  in  him  that  made  him  keep  his  face 
with  watchful  suspicion  on  his  enemy;  it 
99 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

showed  progress  in  the  hostility  between 
the  two,  and  it  was  partly  in  answer  to 
the  half  -  contemptuous  flash  that  Mar 
shall  gave  Stallard,  as  he  coldly  lifted  his 
hat. 


VIII 

BUT  again  Stallard  did  not  come,  and 
again  Anne  forgave  him.  He  was  excep 
tional;  he  was  busy;  he  was  shy — and  he 
was  not  shy ;  there  were  a  thousand 
things  in  addition  to  the  one  that  was 
important :  she  became  quite  sure  that  he 
was  avoiding  her  for  some  definite  reason, 
and  that  bothered  her  a  good  deal.  Once 
she  met  him  for  a  moment  on  the  steps  of 
the  Capitol  and,  with  intentional  lightness, 
she  reminded  him  of  his  broken  promise. 
That  time  he  took  her  words  with  a  seri 
ousness  not  so  deadly ;  and,  thereafter,  as 
the  days  went  by,  her  fear  abated  and  her 
interest  grew. 

Just  now  she  was  sitting  on  the  old 
worn  steps  of  the  ancient  Hannah  man- 
101 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

sion.  The  blue-grass  was  rich  under  the 
trees  around  her,  the  birds  were  singing 
as  though  love  were  going  to  live  forever, 
and  the  soft  air  was  like  some  comforting 
human  presence.  As  she  rose  to  start 
home,  she  saw  Stallard  emerge  from  the 
old  wooden  bridge,  and  she  sat  down 
again.  The  session  was  doubtless  just 
over  and  he  was  going  for  a  walk.  He 
passed  along  the  other  side  of  the  street 
Avithout  seeing  her,  and  in  a  moment  she 
rose  again.  She  knew  her  motive  when 
she  hesitated  at  the  gate  and  turned  the 
same  way,  smiling  indulgently  at  herself 
as  she  walked  along,  and,  a  little  later, 
smiling  at  chance,  which  is  sometimes 
genial,  when  she  saw  that  she  would  meet 
Stallard  where  one  road  turns  down  the 
river  and  another  winds  up  the  hill.  The 
mountaineer  had  been  down  one  way; 
had  changed  his  mind  and  was  coming 
back.  She  stepped  from  the  sidewalk  to 
take  the  road  up  the  hill,  with  her  face 
102 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

turned  to  him  to  speak  and  expecting  him 
to  keep  his  course ;  but,  without  looking 
up  and  not  hearing  her  light  step,  he 
turned,  too,  and  they  met  in  the  middle  of 
the  road. 

"Are  we  going  the  same  way?"  she 
asked,  without  calling  him  by  name- 
Surprise  a  mountaineer  and  you  startle 
him.  It  is  an  inherited  trait  of  people 
who  live  primitive  lives  among  the  hills 
and  must  be  on  the  alert  for  an  enemy. 
Instantly  Stallard's  hands  were  withdrawn 
from  his  pockets  and  a  watchful  light  quick 
ened  in  his  eyes. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  you  skeered  me  !" 
It  was  the  slip  of  surprise,  but  Colton 
had  made  even  vulgarisms  like  this  tol 
erable  for  her.    Much  of  the  mountaineer's 
speech  was  simply  obsolete  elsewhere,  he 
had   explained.     The   mountaineer  clung 
to  old  customs,  old  words,  old  pronunci 
ations,  because  new  ones  had  never  reach 
ed  him.     Certain  words  were  no  more  in- 
103 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

correct  than  certain  customs  were  immor 
al.  In  the  outer  world,  both  were  old- 
fashioned  merely. 

"  I'm.  goin'  up  on  the  hill,"  he  said,  with 
a  gesture.  "  Are  you  ?" 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  simply,  for  in  the  frac 
tion  of  time  between  his  speech  and  hers 
she  so  made  up  her  mind. 

The  smooth  -  beaten  turnpike,  shining 
like  metal  ahead  of  them,  was  canopied 
with  interwoven  branches  and  dappled 
with  the  sunlight  that  fell  through  them. 
Hill,  tree,  and  the  singing  of  birds  were  on 
the  right  hand,  and  the  town  lay  under 
its  haze  of  smoke  to  the  left.  It  is  against 
etiquette  in  the  mountains  for  a  young 
man  and  a  young  woman  to  stroll  un- 
chaperoned  in  the  woods  —  a  guardian 
seems  necessary  only  for  the  extremes  of 
civilization — and  when  Anne  suggested 
turning  aside  to  look  for  flowers,  the 
mountaineer  hesitated  instinctively,  and 
then,  with  a  subtler  thought,  pushed  open 
104 


\ 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  little  gate  that  swung  from  the  body 
of  an  oak  where  she  had  stopped.  The 
leaves  in  the  woods  were  full,  and  the  sun 
light  had  the  gold  of  autumn. 

Stallard  began  drawing  in  his  breath. 
"  I  always  come  up  here  when  I'm  home 
sick,"  he  said.  "It  makes  me  think  of 
the  mountains  —  these  hills.  There's  a 
mountain  tree  there,  and  there,  and  there's 
another,"  pointing  out  a  lynn,  a  chestnut, 
a  beech.  "There  are  mountain  birds  up 
here,  too  " — a  polyglot  chat  was  chuckling. 
"  Hear  that  ?  My  father  used  to  call  that 
the  'plough-bird.'  It  goes  up  the  trunk 
of  a  tree — Gee !  Haw  ! — first  to  the  right 
and  then  to  the  left ;  then  it  halts  and 
clucks,  just  as  though  it  wanted  a  steer  to 
move  on.  When  it  gets  to  the  branches, 
it  drops  down  through  the  air  as  though 
it  were  hurt,  and  begins  all  over  again. 
And  this  air  " — drawing  it  into  his  great 
chest — "  I  can  smell  the  roots  of  that  sas 
safras.  There's  a  spring  up  here,  too.  It's 
105 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  only  place  where  I  can  get  a  good 
drink  of  water."  • 

It  seemed  volubility,  so  long  a  speech, 
and  it  gave  Anne  a  surprise,  as  did  the 
mountaineer's  change  of  manner.  He  was 
quite  easy  and  unconscious  now,  for  he 
Avas  with  her  alone,  and  he  was  in  the 
woods,  where  he  was  at  home.  They  were 
going  up  a  path  through  a  tangled  thicket 
of  undergrowth.  A  little  stream  of  water 
tinkled  down  the  ravine  like  a  child  prat 
tling  to  itself,  and  tinkled  dreamily  on 
through  dark  shadows  into  the  sunlight. 
A  bluebird  fluttered  across  it  and,  high 
above  them,  a  cardinal  drew  a  sinuous  line 
of  scarlet  through  the  green  gloom  and 
dropped  with  a  splutter  of  fire  into  a  cool 
pool. 

"  Well,"  laughed  Stallard,  "  he's  in  my 
spring."  Somewhere  out  in  the  depths, 
just  then,  rose  cool  flutelike  notes,  as 
though  satyrs  were  teaching  young  fauns 
to  play  on  reeds.  "  That's  another,"  said 

106 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

Stallard,  delightedly.  "  It's  the  first  time 
I've  heard  him.  I  don't  know  what  his 
name  is." 

"That's  a  wood- thrush,"  said  Anne, 
stopping  at  the  base  of  a  tree  and  sinking 
down  on  a  root.  She  had  gathered  only 
a  few  flowers,  but  she  was  tired. 

Stallard  stretched  his  long  length  in  the 
grass  below  her.  He  was  listening  to  the 
wood-thrush  and,  for  the  moment,  he  for 
got  her,  or  he  had  not  learned  that  she  let 
little  pass  unseen ;  for  she  was  following 
his  mood  as  it  became  thoughtful,  reminis 
cent,  and  passed  finally  into  the  deep  sad 
ness  she  had  noted  on  the  drive.  It  was 
the  second  time  she  had  ever  seen  his  face 
relax  from  the  fixed  look  that  made  it  in 
scrutable  as  to  all  else  except  some  domi 
nant  purpose.  It  had  nothing  of  the 
dreaming  quality  of  Marshall's  pensive 
moods,  it  Avas  not  temperamental ;  it  came 
from  some  definite,  tangible  source,  for  it 
got  bitter  and  hard  as  the  mood  held  him, 
107 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

even  after  the  bird's  gentle  fluting  ceased 
a  moment  and  again  came  like  an  echo 
from  a  distant  glade. 

"  I  think  you  must  have  forgotten, 
haven't  you  ?"  she  asked,  again  playfully, 
to  divest  the  question,  as  well  as  the  mem 
ory  that  it  must  bring  to  both,  of  especial 
significance. 

He  knew  what  she  meant.     "  Oh  no." 

"Well,  then,  it's  a  good  time  to  begin. 
I'm  waiting."  She  was  pulling  a  stalk  of 
blue -grass  from  its  casing,  and  Stallard 
turned  to  look  full  at  her.  "  Why  do  you 
want  to  know  ?" 

It  was  well  that  she  was  doing  some 
thing,  or  the  sudden  question  and  the  pe 
culiar  tone  of  it  Avould  have  taken  her  off 
guard.  As  it  was,  there  was  no  need  for 
her  eyelashes  to  lift  until  the  stalk  came 
loose.  Then  she  raised  its  white  base  to 
her  lips  and  bit  it  off  quite  calmly. 

"  You    mustn't    ask    me    reasons ;    you 
must  never  ask  any  woman  reasons." 
108 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

It  was  her  first  parry,  and  she  saw  that 
parrying  with  him  was  going  to  be  diffi 
cult — his  thrusts  were  so  out  of  rule.  He 
was  looking  at  her  in  a  blunt,  penetrating 
way,  and  she  did  not  lift  her  eyes  until 
his  face  was  turned  again  towards  the 
faint  piping  of  the  thrush.  She  was  not 
ready  to  enter  that  question  with  herself, 
much  less  w^ith  him. 

"  There  ain't  much  to  tell,"  he  was  say 
ing,  slowly.  "  I  Yive  at  the  head  -  waters 
of  the  Cumberland,  where  the  mountains 
are  purty  steep.  A  neighbor  of  mine  fell 
out  of  his  own  corn-field  once  and  broke 
his  neck.  I  went  to  school  in  a  log-house 
for  three  months  in  winter  for  three  years, 
working  and  studying  at  home  between 
times.  I  stopped  then  because  I  knew 
more  than  the  man  who  was  teaching  the 
school.  I  made  enough  money,  logging, 
to  get  to  the  Bible  college  at  Lexington. 
I  soon  found  out  I  wasn't  called  to  be  a 
preacher,  so  I  went  over  into  the  College 

109 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

of  Arts.  I  worked  in  the  professors' 
gardens;  I  did  my  own  cooking — any 
thing — everything.  It  took  me  six  years, 
but  I  got  through.  I  went  back  home 
and  I  taught  school  and  I  studied  law. 
Then  I  practised  at  my  country-seat  until 
I  ran  for  the  Legislature.  That's  all." 

That  was  all.  It  was  a  plain  record  of 
plain  facts,  and  Anne  knew  not  half  the 
tale  of  hardship  that  was  left  untold; 
what  the  bitter,  patient  fight  with  the 
hard  conditions  of  his  birth  had  been,  she 
could  not  even  guess. 

"  Yes,  it  was  a  purty  hard  row,"  he  add 
ed,  simply,  as  though  he  were  following 
her  thoughts ;  "  but  I'd  hoe  it  over  again 
if  it  had  to  be  done — for  one  reason,  any 
how — because  I  can  do  more  for  my  peo 
ple.  But  for  that  I  think,  sometimes,  that 
I  wouldn't,  if  I  were  back  at  the  begin 
ning,  knowing  what  I  knoAv  now,  and  had 
my  choice.  It  nearly  cost  me  my  religion, 
and  it  left  me  hung  midway  between 
110 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

heaven  and  hell.  Then  I've  learned  to 
rebel  against  what  I  can't  escape,  and  to 
value  what  I  can  never  get." 

Stallard's  face  settled  back  into  reverie, 
and  there  was  a  long  silence — so  little  was 
there  that  Anne  could  say.  She  was  curious 
to  know  definitely  what  he  meant ;  he  had 
opened  the  way,  whether  purposely  or  not, 
for  her  to  ask,  but  she  swerved  from  the 
question,  and  asked  quite  another : 
"  Where  did  you  learn  to  speak  ?" 
Stallard  laughed.  "  I  never  learned. 
It's  natural,  what  there  is  of  it.  I  used 
to  pray  in  meetin's  when  I  was  a  boy. 
Then  I  used  to  speak  in  college.  I  never 
could  write  a  speech — I  have  to  talk  off 
hand.  That's  the  way  I  made  my  vale 
dictory."  He  laughed  again,  and  Anne 
gave  a  little  cry  of  surprise. 

"  Yes,  I  remember;  that  was  you,  too." 
"  You  heard  of  that  ?"  he  asked. 
"  Who  didn't  ?"  was  her   answer,  and 
Stallard's  face  shone, 
in 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

It  was  epoch-making  in  the  history  of 
valedictories  at  the  old  university  —  that 
speech  ;  and  the  pathos  of  it  was  uninten 
tional  and  quite  unconscious.  A  big, 
rough,  manly  countryman  had  stepped 
out  and  spoken  from  a  slip  of  notes  in  his 
hand.  He  was  not  sorry  to  go,  he  said, 
calmly.  He  had  worked  hard;  he  had 
asked  no  favors,  incurred  no  obligation. 
He  had  come  as  rough  material ;  he  had 
paid  for  the  privilege  of  being  planed 
down.  The  professors  were  paid  to  plane 
him  down.  He  had  tried  to  do  his  duty  ; 
he  believed  they  had  done  theirs.  He  had 
no  personal  gratitude  to  express  to  any 
body.  Nor  had  he  any  pathetic  farewell 
to  make  to  the  people  of  the  town.  He 
had  received  no  hospitality  at  their  hands. 
He  had  been  under  hardly  a  single  roof 
outside  the  campus.  He  knew  the  face  of 
hardly  a  woman  before  him.  He  had  not 
a  word  of  complaint  or  blame.  There  was 
no  reason  why  the  facts  of  his  college  life 
112 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

should  have  been  otherwise ;  only  they 
were  not.  The  honor  of  the  valedictory 
had  not  been  conferred  on  him  by  his 
classmates,  nor  by  the  professors,  nor  by 
the  people  of  the  town.  He  had  won  that, 
working  for  something  else.  He  knew 
what  the  valedictorian  was  expected  to 
do.  He  had  been  listening  to  valedictories 
for  six  years.  He  could  not  doubt  the 
sincerity  of  his  predecessors,  but  he  must 
tell  what  was  the  truth  for  him ;  and 
doing  that,  he  could  not  follow  them. 
He  had  his  little  memories,  associations, 
friendships ;  they  were  few,  but  they  were 
too  sacred  for  him  to  bid  them  farewell 
from  that  platform.  He  had  come  an 
alien — an  alien  he  was  going  away.  And 
he  was  glad  to  go — to  get  to  other  work. 
He  would  have  liked  to  give  them  high- 
wrought  sentiment,  shining  metaphors ; 
to  wring  them  with  the  agony  of  farewell 
into  tears  even  ;  but  he  had  to  tell  the 
truth.  The  truth  was  what  he  had  told, 

H  113 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  more  to  tell  there  was  not.  So  speak 
ing,  he  sat  down. 

The  good  old  president  sat  through  it 
bewildered  and  pained.  The  professor  of 
English  looked  mad.  The  bluff  old  pro 
fessor  of  Greek  was  laughing  in  his  eyes 
and  under  his  right  hand,  which  covered 
his  mouth.  The  dean  of  the  Bible  col 
lege,  who  had  labored  to  save  Stallard's 
soul  from  perdition  and  his  powers  for  the 
church,  was  openly  resentful  and  hurt ; 
while  the  little  man  who  helped  experi 
ments  in  the  laboratory  was  laughing  in 
his  sleeve  at  them  all.  The  same  variety 
of  results  was  perceptible  in  the  house. 
Only  the  editor  of  the  town  paper  and  a 
few  scattered  bold  spirits  broke  into  ap 
plause,  but  the  hall  hummed  just  the  same, 
and  the  speaker  was  the  man  of  the  day. 

"Why,  I'm    not   a   patchin'   to   Sherd 

Raines,"  Stallard  went  on — "  the  fellow  I 

roomed  with  at  college.     He  and  I  made  a 

bargain  when  I  found  out  I  wasn't '  called.' 

114 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

He  said  he'd  teach  the  folks  at  home  re 
ligion  if  I'd  teach  'em  law." 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do — what  do 
you  want  to  do  ?" 

"  My  best,  always,  and  let  the  rest  go. 
I'm  a  fatalist,  I  reckon,  as  I  found  out 
when  I  studied  moral  philosophy.  I  take 
what  comes,  if  it  is  better  than  what  I 
have.  I  have  my  wishes,  my  hopes,  even 
a  definite  ambition ;  but  I  sha'n't  risk 
wrecking  my  life  on  it,  especially  when 
what  I  most  wish  for  I  knew  nothing  of 
until  it  was  too  late  to  acquire  it,  if  it  was 
not  denied  me  even  to  acquire  it,  when  I 
was  born." 

He  pulled  down  the  brim  of  his  hat  and 
looked  away.  Some  instinct,  some  fear 
held  her  back  from  asking  just  what  he 
meant,  and  she  watched  him,  greatly  puz 
zled.  She  was  sure  now  that  his  was  the 
strongest  face  she  had  ever  seen ;  and  his 
history  was  as  plain  in  it  as  it  was  in  his 
words.  There  was  not  a  line  about  brow, 
115 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

nose,  mouth,  or  chin  that  was  not  chiselled 
into  force  of  character,  force  of  purpose. 
If  there  was  a  hint  of  contradiction  in  his 
make-up,  it  was  too  fine  for  her  vision, 
keen  as  that  was.  It  was  the  flawlessness 
in  this  one  bulwark  of  strength  that  had 
drawn  her  and  made  her  fear.  She  shrank 
from  his  eyes  when  he  turned  all  at  once 
to  her;  there  was  a  light  in  them  that 
was  not  pleasant. 

"  I  wonder  if  you  could  guess  what 
turned  me  away  from  religion  to  law  ?" 

He  pointed  to  the  yellow  dome  of  the 
Capitol  through  a  rift  in  the  trees,  and  she 
knew  the  half  of  what  he  meant — that  he 
meant  Marshall.  "  I  was  in  the  Bible  col 
lege,  and  the  first  Commencement  I  ever 
saw  was  his.  I  heard  his  speech  ;  he  had 
the  salutatory ;  and  I  was  right  under 
him,  looking  up  into  his  face,  lie  spoke 
over  my  head  and  never  saw  me.  It  was 
Kentucky  for  the  Kentuckians — his  speech 
— and  he  didn't  let  us  mountain  folks  in 
116 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

at  all.  I  couldn't  catch  his  eye  when  he 
spoke  of  my  people  as  he  did  down  there 
in  the  House  the  other  day.  I  knew  him 
the  moment  he  got  up,  and  I  felt  just  as  I 
did  away  back  in  college.  It's  kind  o' 
like  a  storm  down  in  the  mountains  when 
the  river  is  high.  I  can  hear  the  wind  crash 
ing  the  big  trees  together  and  the  water 
roar.  Lightning  just  seems  to  flash  in 
front  of  my  eyes,  and  I  can  hear  the  thun 
der — I  tell  you,  I  can  hear  it.  That's  the 
way  it  is  below."  Stallard  moved  his 
hand  to  and  fro,  as  though  he  were  on 
some  peak  and  the  elements  were  raging 
under  him.  "  I'm  up  above  somehow  " 
tapping  his  forehead — "  an'  I  seem  to  have 
the  strength  of  them  all  right  here"- 
stretching  out  his  right  hand  and  gripping 
it — "  and  I  know  that  what  I  want  to  do 
then,  is  done.  I  know  that  now.  That's 
the  way  I  felt  after  his  speech  in  college 
that  day  when  the  band  crashed  in  from 
the  gallery ;  and  the  people  clapped  their 

117 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

hands;  and  the  ushers,  with  flowers  in 
their  button-holes  and  their  canes  wrapped 
in  red  and  white  and  blue  ribbons,  carried 
him  up  notes  and  flowers ;  and  everybody 
talked  and  smiled  and  nodded ;  and  he 
sitting  upon  the  platform,  looking  red  and 
proud  and  happy.  I  must  have  been  a 
great  fool,  for  I  could  hardly  keep  from 
getting  up  right  then  and  shouting  out, 
'  Brother,  you  ain't  the  only  man  as  can 
do  that';  and,  thank  God,  the  time  did 
come  at  last." 

Stallard  stopped  short,  seeing  Anne's 
pained  and  helpless  face.  He  had  spoken 
quietly,  but  a  zigzag  streak  of  red  had  run 
up  and  down  each  side  of  his  face,  and  he 
had  had  to  stop,  now  and  then,  in  the 
hesitancy  that  with  him  meant  violent 
emotion.  Anne  did  not  speak  again  until 
she  saw  that  he  had  himself  in  hand  once 
more. 

"  I  was  there  that  day,"  she  found  her 
self  saying,  partly  that  he  might  not  think 
118 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

she  was  shifting  too  suddenly  away  from 
the  theme. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  quickly.  "  I  saw  you. 
You  dropped  your  umbrella,  and  you 
waited  for  me  to  pick  it  up — out  on  the 
steps." 

He  spoke  calmly  and  as  though  with 
a  quickly  made  resolution,  and  the  girl 
started  and  listened — surprised,  perplexed, 
and  watching  with  the  strength  of  her 
soul  in  her  eyes. 

He  knew  then ;  he  had  known  all  along ; 
why —  And  then,  because  the  woman  in 
her  could  not  help  herself : 

"  Why  didn't  you  pick  it  up?" 

He  did  not  answer.  If  he  even  heard 
her,  he  did  not  show  it ;  he  was  going  on 
as  though  she  were  asking  him  quite  an 
other  question : 

"  Yes,  my  people  live  down  in  the  moun 
tains;  they  have  been  there  a  hundred 
years.  My  father  is  dead.  My  mother  is 
at  home,  and  one  married  sister,  whose 
119 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

worthless  husband  was  killed  in  the  feud. 
My  sister  is  hardly  older  than  you,  I  im 
agine,  and  yet  she  looks  old  enough  to  be 
your  mother.  She  has  four  children,  and 
she  has  worked  in  the  fields"  —Anne 
shrank,  and  he  saw — "  not  before  her  mar 
riage,  mind  you,  nor  since  her  husband's 
death.  Let  me  see  your  hand." 

She  held  it  out  with  the  sensation  of 
obeying  an  unspoken  command.  He  look 
ed  at  it  intently — the  pink  nails,  long  white 
fingers,  the  threadlike  veins  in  the  round 
wrist — but  he  did  not  touch  it. 

"  Her's  is  like  mine,"  he  said,  turning 
over  his  broad  palm.  "It's  hard  and 
rough  and  sunburnt ;  and  his  looks  as  soft 
as  yours,  almost." 

"  Haven't  you  any  brothers  ?"  she  asked, 
quickly,  to  turn  him  away  from  the  dan 
gerous  theme ;  and  then  she  trembled  at 
her  own  question,  for  Stallard  started  vis 
ibly  and  did  not  reply  at  once. 

"  Two,"  he  said,  at  last.  "  One  is  at 
120 


home — he  is  a  half-brother;  and  the  oth 
er" — his  tone  got  harsh,  he  rose  suddenly 
to  his  feet,  and  answered  with  his  back  to 
her :  "  He's  in  jail." 

"  Oh—  It  was  a  swift  cry  of  pain,  of 
apology,  and  it  was  enough. 

The  mountaineer  had  turned  full  upon 
her.  "  I  want  you  to  know — everything. 
My  mother  can't  write  her  own  name. 
My  sister  barely  can.  My  father  made 
his  mark,  though  his  father's  father  wrote 
a  better  hand  than  I  do  —  an  old  deed 
shows  that.  My  mother  is  rough,  igno 
rant,  not  a  lady  as  you  would  say,  though 
she  is  the  best  woman  I  know  on  earth. 
They  are  all  mountaineers,  ignorant  moun 
taineers  ;  as  Marshall  would  call  them," 
he  added,  bitterly,  " '  pore  white  trash.' 
My  brother  is  in  jail,  as  he  deserves  to  be." 

And  then  Stallard  went  on  to  tell  about 
that  brother ;  how  he  had  done  all  he 
could  to  keep  him  from  the  evil  to  which, 
as  a  boy  even,  he  seemed  irresistibly  drawn. 

121 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

How  he  had  kept  aloof  from  the  feud  in 
which  his  brother  had  taken  an  active 
part ;  how  the  latter  had  sunk  lower  and 
lower  until  just  punishment  had  caught 
him  at  last.  He  himself  was  like  his 
mother ;  his  brother  was  more  violent  and 
had  less  restraint,  like  his  father ;  that  was 
the  difference  between  the  two.  The  turn 
of  a  hand  and  each  might  have  had  the 
other's  fate.  That  was  the  way  of  chance. 
"  My  mother's  people  came  from  eastern 
Virginia,  like  yours.  They  owned  slaves, 
like  yours.  Yours  came  here ;  mine  stayed 
in  the  wilderness.  You  kept  your  level ; 
we  went  down;  through  no  virtue  of 
yours,  no  fault  of  ours.  It  was  fate.  I 
think  of  Marshall  and  you,  and  of  my  sis 
ter  and  me.  You  were  born  so ;  we  were 
born  so.  For  that  reason  what's  yours 
without  the  asking  is  not  ours  at  any  cost 
— not  now.  If  there's  a  worse  blow  in 
the  face  of  a  man  who  does  the  best  with 
what  comes  to  him  than  to  learn  the  value 

122 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

of  what  he  can  never  get,  I  hope  it  m&y 
be  spared  me.  To  be  willing  to  do  any 
thing,  deny  everything,  and  to  know  that 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other  can  ever 
wholly  count,  that — "  Stallard  waved 
his  hand,  through  sheer  inability  to  go  on. 
Neither  knew  the  full  and  personal  sig 
nificance  of  what  he  said,  but  through  it 
all  the  girl  sat  pained  and  mute,  touched 
too  deep  down  for  tears.  She  kept  silent, 
even  when  they  rose  and  went  down  the 
path  again,  though  Stallard,  with  unsus 
pected  delicacy,  turned  his  talk  again  to 
the  birds  and  trees.  Only  when  he  reach 
ed  the  gate  at  the  oak  did  he  strike  the 
chord  again. 

"  I  didn't  pick  it  up,"  he  said,  "  because 
I  didn't  even  see  it  until  you  started  down 
for  it  yourself.  I  was  looking  at  you.  I 
had  followed  you  out  of  the  hall  to  see 
you  again.  And  no  day  has  passed  since, 
no  hour  hardly,  that  I  have  not  seen  you 
looking  at  me  with  a  smile,  just  as  you 
123 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

looked  then.  It  is  not  so  strange.  You 
want  to  see  the  best  in  the  world,  know 
the  best,  be  the  best.  Don't  you  think  it 
would  be  easy,  then,  for  you  to  remember 
your  first  vision  of  what  you  realized 
was  the  best  ?  Especially  when,  there 
after,  you  are  shut  off  for  years  from  all 
that  is  best?  I  couldn't  have  forgotten 
you,  if  I  had  tried.  Sometimes  I  have 
tried.  But  for  you,  after  all,  I  might  not 
have  gone  on.  I  might  be  living  in  a  log 
l/cah'm  in  the  mountains,  and  tied  there, 
with  a  wife  and  children,  forever — and  it 
might  be  the  better  for  me  if  I  were.  But 
you  helped  open  to  me  the  world  against 
which  I  am  still  knocking  for  entrance — 
you  and  he  —  see  what  I  owe  you  —  yes, 
and  him,  too.  And  you  are  helping  open 
it  now  —  the  same  world  which,  I  am 
afraid,  is  barred  me  as  heaven  is,  for, 
without  cowardice  or  disloyalty,  I  can 
never  escape  my  own.  I  didn't  know 
you  at  first — "  He  stopped,  holding  her 

124 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

eyes  with  his,  so  that,  in  the  moment  of 
silence,  she  felt  weak  and  afraid  and  was 
glad  when  he  went  on.  "  You  are  not  as 
lovely  as  I  thought  you  were  " — she  could 
not  smile  even  to  herself  at  his  honesty— 
"  and  no  wonder.  Your  face  has  always 
been  the  face  of  something  unearthly  to 
me,  and  now  I  see  the  human.  I  didn't 
know  you  until  you  smiled  at  me  the 
other  night,  when  you  were  singing,  and 
I  never  quite  know  you  as  the  same,  un 
less  you  look  as  you  looked  then — as  you 
look  now,"  he  added,  for  Anne  was  smil 
ing  faintly.  Stallard's  voice  was  so  gentle 
and  kind,  and  it  was  all  so  strange.  He 
never  dreamed  that  she  could  doubt  a 
scintilla  of  what  he  said ;  nor  did  she, 
strange  as  it  all  was. 

Stallard  had  opened  the  gate  and,  moun- 
taineerlike,  had  gone  through  first  and 
was  holding  it  open  for  her.  As  she  passed 
through  she  paused,  lifting  her  eyes  sud 
denly  to  his. 

125 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

"I  saw  you  that  day  —  I  remember, 
too."  The  words  rose  impulsively  to  her 
half-open  lips,  but  some  vague  dread  held 
them  back. 

The  sun  was  cutting  like  a  great  red 
scimitar  down  through  a  shadowed  hill 
in  the  west.  Arnold's  Wold  was  already 
in  dusk.  A  cloud  of  smoke  was  rising 
above  the  prison,  and  the  Catholic  cross 
rose  whitely  through  it,  as  though  swung 
down  from  above.  There  was  still  a  pur 
ple  glow  edging  the  clouds  in  the  east, 
and  the  marble  on  the  hill  caught  the 
last  light  sadly.  To  Anne  the  past  hour 
was  already  taking  the  misty  shape  of 
a  dream — into  such  a  melodrama  had  the 
facts  of  both  their  lives  in  that  hour  been 
cast,  in  spite  of  the  simple,  open  story 
Stallard  had  told.  In  no  way  had  he 
made  an  appeal  to  her  pity,  or  to  her 
sympathies ;  for  that  reason,  he  had  both 
wholly.  Outwardly  now,  as  they  went 
down  the  hill,  he  was  ironlike  once  more ; 
126 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

but  there  was  a  softer  ring  in  his  voice 
when  he  spoke,  and  a  new  tone  of  un 
derstanding.  On  the  old  bridge  he  stop 
ped — looking  up  stream.  ,  A  long  raffe  of 
logs  was  floating  down  thenriver  towards 

O  C3— ^•—^*|J  — —  — — — , . 

them. 

"  That's  the  way  I  came  down  to  go 
to  college,"  he  said,  smiling.  "  I  walked 
from  here  to  Lexington." 

A  mountaineer  was  standing  at  the 
huge  stern  oar,  motionless.  As  the  end 
of  the  raft  swung  under  them  they  could 
hear  him  singing ;  and,  still  smiling,  Stal- 
lard  bent  his  head  to  listen. 

"  I've  got  a  gal  at  the  head  of  the  holler, 
Heh-o-dee-um-dee-eedle-dahdy-dee  !" 

And  then  he  swept  the  big  paddle 
through  the  water.  Anne,  too,  smiled ; 
it  was  the  song  the  young  trusty  sang  in 
the  garden.  Stallard  bent  lower  and  sang 
back. 

"  She  won't  come,  an'  I  won't  foller." 
127 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

The  fello\v  looked  quickly  up,  gave  a 
"hooray,"  and,  with  a  wave  of  his  hat, 
sent  the  refrain  up  with  a  hearty  swing, 

"  Heh-o-dee-um-dee-eedle-dahdy-dee  !" 

"He  doesn't  know  me,  but  he  knows 
that  I  know  where  he's  from,"  said  Stal- 
lard.  "  I  used  to  go  over  to  the  Ken 
tucky  River  and  bring  logs  down  that 
way.  "We'd  tie  up  to  the  bank,  and  then 
we'd  all  go  up  the  middle  of  the  street 
single  file.  We  didn't  know  what  the 
sidewalks  (hearth-stones  I  remember  old 
Tom  Perkins  used  to  call  them)  were  for. 
We  went  back  part  of  the  way  on  the 
train,  and  we  climbed  through  the  win 
dows,  not  knowing  where  the  doors  were. 
We  called  the  cars  '  boxes.'  One  fellow 
climbed  over  the  fence  to  his  boarding- 
house,  never  having  seen  a  gate.  I  didn't 
much  expect  in  those  days  that  I'd  be 
walking  along  here  some  day  as  a  mem 
ber  of  the  '  Legislatur,'  as  we  say,  and 

128 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

with  the  Governor's  daughter,  and  she  the 
same — " 

He  stopped  suddenly  and  stiffened.  At 
the  end  of  the  bridge  was  Marshall,  who 
stepped  aside  with  unnecessary  ceremony 
and,  lifting  his  hat,  bowed  with  elaborate 
courtesy.  Not  until  he  saw  Anne's  flush, 
did  Stallard  notice  that  Marshall  was  al 
most  staggering.  At  the  steps  of  the 
Mansion,  Anne  left  her  hand  in  Stallard's 
as  though  she  would  say  one  of  the  thou 
sand  things  that  were  on  her  tongue ;  but 
her  lip  quivered,  and  that  was  all. 


IX 


THE  session  drew  to  a  close.  Several 
times,  Anne  met  Stallard  in  the  street  and 
he  spoke  merely,  lifting  his  hat  now,  and 
passed  on.  She  had  asked  him  once  if  he 
expected  to  come  back  the  following  year. 
His  answer  was  that  he  didn't  know;  he 
would  come,  if  he  were  sent ;  but  that 
he  did  not  mean  to  turn  his  hand  over 
for  a  renomination.  Considering  the  ex 
traordinary  coincidence  of  their  lives,  the 
extraordinary  disclosure  which  linked  the 
present  with  the  past,  and  the  possible  fact 
that,  in  a  few  weeks,  he  might  see  her  for 
the  last  time,  his  course  now  was  inex 
plicable.  He  kept  to  his  seclusion  rigidly. 
She  could  not  believe  that  his  interest  in 
her  was  impersonal,  that  he  regarded  her  as 

130 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

merely  a  spiritual  embodiment  of  certain 
conditions  that  were  denied  him  at  birth, 
that  he  wanted  to  attain,  and  which  he 
believed  were  beyond  him  altogether.  It 
was  only  after  much  thought  that  the 
truth  flashed  and  seared  her  to  the  heart. 
He  saw  the  gulf  between  them.  He  be 
lieved  she  thought  it  impassable,  and,  with 
his  strong  sense  and  sure  insight,  he,  too, 
saw  that  it  was.  He  was  too  proud  to 
make  an  effort  to  bridge  the  gulf  — too 
loyal  to  his  own  people  to  cross  it  alone, 
if  he  could.  He  would  walk  with  them 
on  his  own  side ;  and  with  this  resolution 
he  must  do  as  he  was  doing.  She  liked 
his  pride,  and,  for  that  reason,  the  hard 
conditions  on  which  he  must  uphold  it 
wrung  her  the  more  with  pity. 

Marshall,  too,  she  rarely  saw,  and  she 
knew  the  reason.  He  had  not  been  to 
the  Mansion  since  the  night  she  and  Stal- 
lard  met  him  at  the  bridge.  What  she 
heard  of  the  two  men  in  the  House  kept 
131 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

her  continually  uneasy :  for  no  matter  came 
up  there  in  which  Stallard  and  Marshall 
did  not  antagonize  each  other,  and  Mar 
shall  said  sharp  things  which,  from  Stal- 
lard's  lips,  Anne  knew,  would  bring  about 
trouble. 

To  many,  Marshall's  bitterness  seemed 
unreasonable,  but  perhaps  there  was  only 
one  other  person,  than  Colton,  who  so 
much  as  suspected  that  his  hostility  was 
not  altogether  political :  that  was  Kath- 
erine  Craig.  She  saw  the  inner  play  of 
his  mind,  of  which  Marshall  himself  was 
hardly  conscious,  and  she  sensibly  kept  it 
to  herself.  Hitherto,  Marshall  had  met 
his  rivals  chivalrously,  as  he  would  have 
met  them,  man  to  man,  in  any  conflict — 
as  he  would  have  met  Stallard,  had  the 
mountaineer  been  a  gentleman.  He  al 
ways  said  that  he  had  never  known  jeal 
ousy — that  a  common  admiration  was  to 
him  a  link  of  sympathy  rather  than  a 
cause  of  hate  —  and  to  his  rivals  he  was 
132 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

especially  courteous.  A  foreign  lover  got 
from  no  one  a  more  hospitable  welcome 
than  from  Marshall ;  but,  with  Stallard,  it 
was  different.  The  mountaineer  had  shown 
himself  a  boor  by  exposing  his  enmity  be 
fore  ladies  and  in  a  drawing-room.  War 
was  declared  between  the  two  before  he 
had  even  looked  upon  Stallard  as  a  possi 
ble  rival.  Not  that  he  seriously  saw  him 
in  that  light  yet — but,  still,  he  was  far  too 
keen  not  to  feel  the  hold  the  mountaineer 
had ;  and  it  vexed  him  with  Anne,  to 
whom  he  dared  not  open  his  lips,  and  gave 
a  surprising  force  to  his  feeling  against 
Stallard.  The  mountaineer  had  power  as 
an  orator.  But  one  thing  appealed  to  the 
girl  more — political  honor — and  that,  he 
knew,  Anne  believed  the  mountaineer  ir 
resistibly  bound  to  achieve.  These  would 
win  her  admiration,  her  interest,  her  re 
spect  ;  and  that  much  Stallard  already  had 
—yes,  he  confessed  quickly,  and  more.  The 
mountaineer  was,  in  her  eyes,  a  man  with 
133 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

a  people  behind  him  —  a  people  who  had 
drifted  back  towards  barbarism  through 
no  fault  of  their  own.  They  were  kindred 
in  distress,  and  his  mission  was  to  aid,  to 
uplift.  Moreover,  he  was  new  to  her  in 
all  ways,  and  he  had  not  dropped,  like  the 
others,  at  once  to  her  feet.  Such  points 
of  favor,  Marshall  counted,  could  never 
win  Stallard  more  than  deep  interest,  deep 
friendship,  perhaps.  The  idea  of  love 
would  be  as  repugnant  to  her,  he  believed, 
as  it  was  to  him.  Intellectually,  she  was 
quite  democratic,  and  she  avowed  democ 
racy,  but  in  her  exactions  and  deepest  feel 
ings  she  was  aristocrat  to  her  heart's 
core.  Thus  far,  Marshall  could  go ;  thus 
far,  he  went.  But  how  Stallard's  personal 
history,  his  early  upward  fight,  his  frank 
facing  of  the  facts  of  his  birth,  his  just 
bitterness  that  fate  should  draw  the  dead 
line  for  one  man  who  wanted  to  cross  it 
and  suffer  another  to  be  born  on  the  other 
side  and  care  nothing  for  the  advantage; 
134 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

how  the  secret  inner  sorrow  that  his  broth 
er  had  put  upon  him  stirred  her  passion 
ate  pity — of  all  that  he  knew  nothing,  or 
he  might  have  been  uneasy  indeed. 

Anne  found  herself  in  a  curious  maze. 
This  brother  of  Stallard's  was,  of  course, 
Buck,  the  young  trusty ;  that  was  doubt 
less  what  he  had  yet  to  tell  her.  Crim 
inals,  after  conviction,  were  sent  to  the 
penitentiary  from  all  parts  of  the  State; 
she  knew  that,  but  she  did  not  know  that 
moonshiners  were  not ;  and  in  some  way 
she  had  come  to  believe  that  the  young 
trusty's  crime  was  "moonshining, "  which 
she  had  come  to  regard,  through  Buck's 
testimony  and  Colton's  strictures  on  the 
revenue  service,  with  much  tolerance  and 
a  good  deal  of  sympathy. 

"  It  wasn't  no  harm  once,"  Buck  argued. 
"  Everybody  made  liquor — some  fellers  was 
jus'  born  to  it.  An'  say,  s'posin'  you  had  a 
'field  o'  corn  in  some  deep  hollow.  You 
can't  tote  hit  out  an',  if  you  did,  you 
135 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

couldn't  sell  nary  a  grain.  An'  s'posin'  you 
had  a  big  family  an'  you  jus'  had  to  have 
soraep'n  to  eat — coffee  an'  sweetenin'  an 
sech.  Whar  you  git  the  money  ?  Thar's 
the  corn  an'  that's  all.  Well,  the  corn  is 
yourn,  hain't  it?  Yes.  Well,  you  can  do 
whut  you  please  with  what's  yourn,  can't 
ye?  You  can  put  that  corn  in  a  pile  an' 
burn  hit  if  you  wants  to,  can't  ye?  You 
can  give  hit  away  ?  Well,  the  only  way 
you  can  git  money  fer  that  corn  is  to 
build  ye  a  still  an'  turn  hit  into  moon 
shine  an'  carry  hit  over  into  Virginny  an' 
sell  hit.  An'  I'd  jus'  like  to  know  what 
right  the  Gover'mint — whut  all  our  folks 
fit  fer — has  to  step  up,  all  of  a  sudden,  an' 
say:  .'Here,  gimme  some  o'  the  money 
you  got  fer  that  corn  o'  yourn,  or  go  to 
jail.' " 

This  was  the  boy's  tale,  and  she  forgave 

much  to  sincerity  of  motive  no  matter  how 

mistaken  it  might  he,  and  she  had  quite 

accustomed    herself  to    thinking  of   him 

136 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

as  the  victim  of  circumstances  and  of  a 
misdemeanor  that  was  not  in  itself  crim 
inal.  Thinking  that,  she  had  allowed  her 
interest  in  him  to  deepen  unreservedly ; 
she  had  suffered  him  much  liberty  of 
speech;  and  now,  Stallard  had  hinted  at 
something  in  his  brother  as  dark  as  crime 
could  be:  so  that  she  was  unsmiling  the 
next  time  Buck  came  to  work,  but  full  of 
pity,  as  she  watched  him  under  a  news 
paper  with  which  she  shaded  her  eyes 
from  the  sun.  Was  it  possible  that  this 
brightfaced  lad,  with  his  careless  laughter 
and  his  easy  chatter,  had  human  blood  on 
his  hands? 

"Hit's  this  way,  Miz  Anne,"  he  was 
saying.  "  One  o'  them  wars  jus'  knocks 
the  fun  out'n  ever'thing.  Somebody  gives 
a  party.  Thar's  Keatons  thar,  an'  thar's 
Stallards  thar.  Purty  soon  thar's  a  row, 
an'  the  party  is  busted  up.  Folks  is 
afeerd  now  to  have  parties.  Sometimes 
a  Stallard  and  a  Keaton  is  a-courtin'  the 
137 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

same  gal,  an'  sometimes  they  both  goes 
to  see  her  the  same  night.  Commonly, 
they  makes  the  gal  say  which  one  she 
likes  best,  an'  t'other  one  takes  his  foot 
in  his  hand  an'  lights  fer  home ;  but  I 
knowed  a  case  once  whar  the  gal  said 
she  jus'  didn't  plumb  know  which." 

The  boy  was  wily  as  a  fox ;  he  stopped 
there.  Something  was  wrong  that  morn 
ing — he  saw  it  in  Anne's  face — and  he 
was  trying  to  get  her  interested. 

"What  happened  then?"  she  asked, 
partly  because  she  wanted  to  know,  partly 
because  he  was  waiting  for  the  question. 

"Well,  they  jus'  stepped  out'n  doors 
an'  fit.  An'  when  Jim  Stallard  was  a- 
gittin'  the  best  o'  Tom  Keaton,  the  gal 
gits  to  cryin' ;  an'  when  Jim  gits  him 
down,  she  runs  -up  an'  pulls  Jim  off  by 
his  ha'r;  an'  Jim  says  the  next  time  he 
fights  fer  a  gal  he  wants  to  be  the  fel 
ler  what's  licked." 

The  girl  laughed,  when  she  felt  close  to 
138 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

tears.  Once  she  thought  of  asking  him 
outright  if  he  were  a  brother  to  Boone 
Stallard,  but  it  was  no  longer  possible; 
when  the  mountaineer  wanted  her  to 
know,  he  would  himself  tell:  and  Anne 
went  in-doors,  much  troubled. 

That  day,  to  her  distress,  all  her  doubt 
was  dissolved. 

In  the  afternoon  she  took  some  friends 
of  her  father  through  the  prison.  Pass 
ing  through  the  dust-cloud  of  a  room  in 
which  prisoners  were  making  laths,  her 
eyes  caught  the  face  and  shape  of  a  con 
vict  who  was  running  a  thin  plank 
through  one  of  the  circular  saws.  The 
jaw  of  the  face  was  square  and  strong; 
the  cheek  towards  her  was  sunken  as 
though  by  a  bullet  or  a  knife  thrust ;  and, 
while  she  looked  at  him,  the  man,  as 
though  to  answer  her  gaze,  lifted  his 
dusty  brows,  and  the  cold,  evil  eyes  under 
them  met  hers  and,  dropping  at  once 
back  to  his  work,  left  her  shuddering. 
139 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

Almost  unconsciously  she  touched  the 
warden's  arm. 

"Who  is  that  man?" 

The  convict  fell  into  a  violent  fit  of 
coughing  as  she  spoke,  and,  when  the 
warden  turned,  Buck  the  trusty  was  nod 
ding  brightly  to  her,  side  by  side  with  the 
man  she  meant. 

"  Oh,  his  name's  Stallard — from  down 
in  the  mountains — one  of  those  feuds — 
murder.  He's  a  pretty  bad  fellow ;  ev 
erybody  asks  about  him.  He's  got  a 
brother  in  the  Legislature,"  he  added  to 
another  of  the  party ;  but  Anne  heard  him, 
and  was  sunk  in  such  sudden  wretched 
ness  that  she  did  not  repeat  her  question. 
She  felt  her  pity  deepening  for  Stallard 
as  she  walked  home,  and  when  she  went 
to  her  room  that  night,  she  was  seeking 
palliation  for  the  young  trusty.  It  was 
hard  to  believe  that  he  was  evil  in  soul — 
he  was  so  light-hearted,  open,  frank,  and 
humorously  curious.  She  found  herself 
140 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

going  back  to  the  time  when  men  exacted 
a  blood  penalty  for  a  slain  kinsman.  She 
recalled  the  boys  words : 

"S'posin'  somebody  was  to  shoot  down 
your  brother,  an'  the  law  wouldn't  tech 
him  —  not     couldn't,    now,     mind     ye  — 
wouldn't.     What  would  you  do?     What 
would  any  feller  do  ?" 

Then  she  faced  the  question ;  what, 
under  such  circumstances,  would  her  own 
father  do?  She  would  learn  the  details 
before  she  judged  the  boy.  No,  she  must 
not  do  even  that ;  Stallard  would  tell  her 
these  when  he  wanted  her  to  know.  No; 
she —  The  thread  was  snapped  there. 
Why  was  she  trying  to  defend  this  boy? 
For  his  own  sake,  or  through  her  pity  of 
Stallard?  Had  the  lad  appealed  to  her 
on  his  own  account  ?  Yes,  but,  ah ! — and 
just  there  the  white  hands  slipped  from 
the  bright  hair  they  had  been  loosening, 
and  Anne  sank  into  a  chair  by  the  win 
dow,  looking  out  with  startled  eyes  into 
141 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  June  night.  When  she  went  to  bed, 
she  lay  there  sleepless  and  a  little  fright 
ened.  She  could  not  put  one  image  out 
side  her  vision  :  now  and  then,  in  her  half- 
conscious  dreams,  the  young  trusty  would 
displace  it;  now  and  then,  Marshall;  of- 
tenest  of  the  three,  the  convict  with  the 
sunken  cheek:  but  it  always  swung  back 
before  her  closed  eyes  in  the  darkness, 
fixed,  calm,  inscrutable — the  face  of  Stal- 
lard,  the  mountaineer. 


X 


SHE  did  not  go  down  to  breakfast  next 
morning.  She  stayed  abed  and,  early  in 
the  afternoon,  Katherine  Craig  came  with 
disturbing  news.  Down  in  the  mountains, 
Colton  had  told  her,  Mace  Keaton  was  at 
his  deviltry  again.  He  had  elected  him 
self  sheriff,  and  had  suffered  a  Stallard  to 
be  shot  down  within  sight  of  him  and  had 
not  raised  his  hand.  Both  parties  were 
once  more  armed  and  organized,  and  the 
Keatons  had  taken  to  "the  brush."  The 
judge  who  had  gone  to  the  county-seat  to 
hold  court  had  been  driven  from  town. 
Any  day  there  might  be  a  general  con 
flict. 

Elsewhere,  Katherine  had  heard  more. 
Marshall  meant  to  bring  up  that  day  his 
143 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

old  bill  to  disrupt  the  county.  He  would 
be  bitter;  and  lately  Stallard's  patience, 
it  was  said,  was  being  worn  to  an  edge. 
Trouble  was  feared. 

About  that  time,  in  the  House,  Marshall 
was  rising  to  his  feet.  He  repeated  all 
he  had  said  and  more — bitterly.  He  ad 
dressed  himself  straight  to  the  gentleman 
from  Roland.  Could  he  deny  such  and 
such,  and  such  and  such?  And  Stallard 
had  to  sit  through  it  all,  white  and  silent, 
for  Marshall,  drinking  as  he  was,  took 
care  to  state  only  facts.  Still,  the  spirit 
of  his  talk  was  vindictive.  It  looked  as 
though  he  wanted  to  bring  about  a  mor 
tal  quarrel,  and  Colton,  who  was  watching 
the  mountaineer's  face,  believed  it  wras 
going  to  come.  The  ticking  of  the  big 
clock  could  be  heard  when  the  mountain 
eer  rose,  but  there  was  no. answering  in 
vective.  Not  once  did  Stallard's  tone  rise 
above  the  level  of  quiet  conversation.  He 
was  pale  and  his  eyes  were  bright,  but  in 
144 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

no  other  way  did  he  show  unusual  emo 
tion.  The  facts  were  as  the  gentleman 
had  stated.  He  had  said  much ;  he  had 
implied  a  good  deal — that  was  irrelevant 
and  unnecessary.  It  was  not  the  place 
where  those  things  should  be  said,  dis 
cussed,  or  answered.  The  gentleman  seem 
ed  to  hold  him  personally  responsible  for 
the  lawlessness  of  his  people.  Very  well, 
he  would  accept  and  bear  the  responsibil 
ity,  and  he  pledged  that  body  that  he 
personally  would  see  that  law  and  order, 
in  the  end,  prevailed. 

The  pressure  of  affairs — for  the  term 
was  growing  short — and  Marshall's  man 
ner  and  condition  were  already  seriously 
against  his  bill.  Stallard's  temperate  words 
defeated  it,  and  Marshall's  face,  flushed  as 
it  was,  paled  a  little.  He  was  standing 
in  the  lobby,  when  Colton  came  out,  and 
a  friend  had  him  by  the  arm  and  was  try 
ing  to  lead  him  away.  He  tried  to  break 

O  » 

loose  when  Stallard  appeared,  and  Colton 

K  145 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

saw  the  mountaineer's  mouth  tighten  and 
a  dangerous  light  leap  from  his  eyes  as  he 
stopped  still  and  waited.  Another  friend 
caught  MarshallVarm,  and  Stallard  walk 
ed  on  as  though  he  had  seen  nothing.  But 
he  went  on  with  a  quickening  step  over 
the  bridge,  and  he  walked  the  hills  till 
dark.  The  animal  in  him  that  he  had 
been  slowly  netting  with  such  care  was 
straining  at  its  cords  now.  It  is  never 
securely  bound  in  a  nature  as  close  to 
earth  as  Stallard's  was ;  and  nothing  will 
make  it  restive  like  the  kindly  eyes  and 
voice  of  a  woman  and  a  rival  claim  for 
them.  It  had  turned  with  leaping  fury 
in  Stallard  and  made  him  primeval  again. 
Marshall  was  not  fooling  him.  He  knew 
the  true  reason  for  the  bitter  hostility  of 
that  day.  Marshall  feared  him  without, 
as  well  as  within,  the  legislative  chamber. 
The  mountaineer  had  no  traditions  of  chiv 
alry  to  hold  him  in  check ;  and  he  went 
on  stripping  himself,  stripping  Marshall, 
146 


THE  KENTUCKIANB 

until  soul  to  soul  the  two  faced  in  a  mor 
tal  fight  for  mastery.  And  could  Anne 
have  seen  his  face  when  the  moon  rose  on 
it  out  in  the  fields,  she  would  have  heard 
her  heart  beat.  Had  Marshall  been  face 
to  face  with  him  in  fact,  as  he  was  in 
mind,  the  mountaineer  would  have  killed 
him  and  gone  striding  on  through  the 
fragrant  dusk,  an  exultant  savage. 

It  was  late  when  he  got  back,  but  the 
strain  of  his  heart  and  his  brain  was  eased ; 
and  the  inner  structure  that  a  strong  soul 
builds  on  religion  first,  and  then  on  a  love 
of  law  that  is  born  of  a  love  of  people 
who  are  in  need  of  restraint,  was  firm 
within  him  again.  He  got  to  his  room 
and  to  his  books  with  the  tempest  in  him 
calm,  and  the  old,  old  resolution  freshly 
made  to  run  his  course,  as  he  had  started, 
to  the  end. 

He  had  a  hard  time  with  his  law  that 
night.  Things  were  alwaj's  passing  be 
tween  his  eyes  and  the  page  that  blurred 
147 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  print ;  and  he  was  glad  when  the  hour 
came  for  the  walk  that  was  a  nightly  cus 
tom  with  him  after  his  task  was  done. 
JSTot  that  he  needed  exercise  that  night ; 
but  the  walk  always  took  him  past  Anne 
Brace's  house,  and  it  was  for  that  sole  rea 
son  that  he  went  now.  There  was  a  dim 
light  in  the  hallway,  but  the  parlor  Avas 
dark,  and  so  was  Anne's  room,  Avhich  he 
had  come  to  know  from  seeing  her  at  her 
AvindoAv,  half  screened  by  maple  leaves. 
As  he  passed  the  rear  of  the  hotel  beyond, 
music  started  through  the  open  windows 
above  him,  and  he  remembered  that  the 
last  hop  of  the  season  was  going  on  that 
night.  Anne  was  doubtless  there  —  and 
Marshall.  Farther  up  the  street,  an  un 
usual  clinking  of  glasses  came  from  behind 
a  pair  of  green  shutters,  and  there  was  an 
unusual  stir  on  the  portico  and  in  the  hall 
way  of  the  hotel.  At  the  top  of  the  steps 
stood  Colton  in  evening  dress,  mopping 
his  face  with  a  handkerchief.  Stallard 
148 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

had  declined  to  go  when  Colton  urged 
him  that  morning,  but  he  let  himself  be 
dragged  up-stairs  now  to  the  door  of  the 
ballroom,  and  there  he  halted  and  stood 
— a  grave,  unsmiling  statue — looking  on. 
He  had  never  seen  waltzing  before,  and, 
while  he  watched,  his  mind  was  on  a 
dance  at  home — a  log  cabin,  a  fiddle  and 
a  banjo,  a  puncheon  floor,  and  men  in 
jeans  and  cowhide  boots  swinging  girls  in 
linsey  under  low,  blackened  rafters  and 
through  the  wavering  light  of  a  tallow 
dip.  And  the  prompting:  "Balance  all! 
Swing  yer  pardners !  Cage  the  bird ! 
Grand  right  an'  wrong  !  Fust  lady  to  the 
right — cheat  an'  swing."  What  a  contrast ! 
Katherine  smiled  at  him  as  she  whirled 
past,  and,  through  the  dancers,  he  saw 
Anne  at  the  other  end  of  the  room  and, 
near  her,  Marshall — dark,  grave,  and  fault 
less  in  dress  and  bearing.  Already  she 
was  gathering  up  her  wraps  and,  when 
the  dance  was  over,  she  was  moving  on 
149 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

Marshall's  arm  towards  the  door.  She 
was  going  home,  and  Stallard  shrank 
back  that  she  might  not  see  him.  As  she 
passed,  he  saw  that  she  was  biting  her  lip 
under  a  forced  smile,  and  Marshall  was 
frowning  darkly.  Something  was  wrong 
between  the  two,  and  it  pleased  him  sav 
agely. 

He  did  not  wait  long  after  they  were 
gone ;  the  brilliant  scene  thrust  him  far 
ther  and  farther  from  Anne.  Even  to  his 
eyes  she  was  marked  from  every  other 
woman  in  the  room  by  her  simple  pres 
ence,  which  seemed  out  of  keeping  with 
the  rush  and  whirl  of  the  place.  And  if 
she  were  out  of  place  in  these  lights,  with 
this  music,  among  these  dainty  things  in 
white — how  would  she  seem  at  home? 
The  thought  stung  him,  as  he  turned  away ; 
it  added  to  his  store  of  bitterness,  but  it 
helped  make  his  purpose  firm. 

The  Mansion  was  only  two  blocks  dis 
tant,  and  straight  on  Stallard's  way  home. 
150 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

The  door  opened  just  as  he  Avas  passing 
by  on  the  other  side  of  the  street,  and, 
having  stopped  unconsciously  in  the  thick 
shadow  of  a  maple,  he  feared  to  move  on. 
Marshall  came  out,  with  his  hat  in  his 
hand,  and  Anne  stood  in  the  door.  It  was 
after  midnight,  and  the  street  was  still. 
Marshall  turned  and  began  talking  in  a 
low  tone  and  rapidly.  Anne  leaned  in 
the  doorway,  with  her  hands  behind  her. 
Her  attitude  was  indifferent  and  her  face 
looked  hard.  She  made  no  answer  as 
Marshall  moved  down  the  steps,  and,  for 
the  second  time  that  day,  an  exultant  fire 
ran  through  him.  She  stood  a  little  while 
just  as  Marshall  had  left  her,  and  then  she 
came  to  the  edge  of  the  porch,  looking 
across  through  the  darkness  where  he  was 
hungrily  watching  her.  Her  eyes  seemed 
almost  to  be  on  him,  as  he  stood  uneasy 
and  noiseless,  but  she  turned  and  closed 
the  door.  He  saw  the  light  in  the  draw 
ing-room  and  in  the  hall  go  out  and,  a 
151 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

moment  later,  another  appear  up-stairs ; 
then  her  face  through  the  leaves  at  the 
window  and  one  hand  reaching  up  for 
the  curtain  ;  and  he  stayed  on,  just  to  see 
her  shadow  pass  no\v  and  then,  till  the 
room  was  dark. 

He  started  for  his  room  then,  little 
reckoning  how  the  girl  lay  looking  with 
sleepless  eyes  into  the  darkness  above  her, 
mystified,  perplexed,  distressed.  It  was 
the  first  time  Marshall  had  been  to  the 
Mansion  for  a  long  while,  and  they  had 
had  the  worst  of  their  many  quarrels. 
She  had  heard  of  the  trouble  in  the  House 
fully,  and  her  sympathies  sided  resistless- 
ly  with  Stallard.  Marshall  was  wrong, 
she  tried  to  argue;  it  was  a  matter  of, 
justice,  she  said — as  though  justice  guided 
a  woman's  sympathies,  she  thought,  be 
fore  the  words  had  quite  left  her  lips. 
Still,  she  had  spoken  as  though  Stallard 
were  a  stranger  to  both,  and  Marshall, 
with  one  reckless  word,  had  made  the  mat- 

152 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

ter  personal.  Then  was  she  very  plain 
with  him.  She  rarely  tried  to  hide  the 
truth,  even  when  there  was  no  need  for 
it  to  be  known ;  for  she  was  fearless  of 
criticism  and  especially,  just  now,  of  his 
—for  she  thought  him  bitter  and  unjust. 
So,  in  her  defence  of  the  mountaineer,  she 
indirectly  laid  bare  her  interest  in  him, 
and  Marshall  was  startled.  She  feared 
that,  in  the  heat  of  the  moment,  she  had 
put  that  interest  too  strong;  and  she  her 
self  was  startled  to  realize  how  little  she 
had  fallen  short  of  the  truth. 

A  revolution  took  place  that  night. 
Grown  reckless  at  last,  Anne  faced  fact 
after  fact,  extraordinary  as  each  was,  and 
finally  went  to  troubled  sleep,  ceasing  to 
question. 


XI 


IT  was  well  for  the  three  that  the  ses 
sion  came  to  a  quick  end.  Marshall  went 
to  his  farm;  Stallard  to  the  mountains; 
Anne  stayed  on  at  the  capital  :  the  sum 
mer  came  and  gave  the  three  time  to 
think. 

Anne  saw  the  leaves  grow  full,  the  hills 
round  with  beauty,  and  the  flowers  go. 
When  the  trees  got  dusty  and  the  hot 
days  came,  she  too  went  home.  She  saw 
nothing  of  Marshall  ;  she  heard  nothing, 
and  she  was  not  surprised  ;  for  she  knew 
his  moods  and  his  ways,  she  thought,  be 
yond  the  chance  of  error.  Nobody  saw 
Marshall  during  those  days  ;  for  he  stayed 
at  home,  passing  his  own  test  of  fire. 
Anne  had  cut  his  pride  to  the  quick.  The 

154 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

mountaineer  had  started  with  nothing, 
and  had  accomplished  all  that  human  ef 
fort  could ;  while  he,  wanting  nothing,  had 
done  only  what  his  birth  and  station  had 
impelled  him  to  do :  that  was  the  blunt 
burden  of  the  contrast  that  he  had  drawn 
on  himself  from  Anne.  In  other  and 
plainer  words,  he  was  little  more  than  a 
machine,  run  by  the  momentum  of  forces 
that  were  prenatal.  He  deserved  little 
credit  for  what  he  had  done,  and  great 
censure  for  not  having  done  more.  That 
was  the  final  courageous  interpretation  he 
gave  her  words,  and  it  was  not  long  be 
fore  his  self -searching  honesty  began  to 
tell  him  that  it  was  all  true.  His  humili 
ation  was  bitter,  but  his  hurt  pride  was 
turned  into  a  power  for  good,  and  started 
a  change  in  him  that  nothing  else  had 
ever  been  able  to  effect ;  for  it  forged  and 
edged  a  purpose — started  him  on  a  course 
of  grim  self-denial  and  turned  him  to 
work. 

155 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

A  century  back,  new  life  was  put  into 
the  lazy  Virginia  blood  that  fought  its 
way  over  the  Cumberland  and  along  the 
Wilderness  Koad  to  the  interior;  it  need 
ed  only  antagonism  then  to  give  it  new 
strength,  and  the  vigor  of  that  pioneer 
effort  is  far  from  spent.  It  is  the  bed 
rock  of  the  Kentuckian's  character  to 
day,  and  a  shaft,  sunk  through  his  easy 
good-humor,  rarely  fails  to  rest  on  it  at 
last.  That  far  down,  the  differences  be 
tween  Marshall  and  Stallard  practically 
ceased ;  down  there,  they  would  meet  as 
granite  meets  granite,  when  a  great  test 
should  come.  But  now,  thanks  to  the 
guidance,  since,  of  an  unseen  Hand,  the 
mountaineer  must  fight  away  from  the 
earth  for  strength,  as  Marshall,  for  help, 
must  fight  back  to  it :  and  the  love  of  the 
same  woman  was  the  motive  power  that 
led  them  opposite  ways. 

They  were  long  days  that  summer,  and 
days  of  gain  to  both,  but  the  Hand  still 

156 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

bore  with  unequal  weight  on  the  moun 
taineer.  Marshall  saw  his  blue  -  gras* 
stripped  and  stored,  the  grain  harvested, 
the  corn  turn  yellow  for  the  kn:'.^ 
With  the  first  crisp  touch  of  frost,  he  was 
busy  in  the  hemp-fields.  Then  came  the 
brooding  days  of  autumn,  the  gentle,  pen 
sive  haze  of  Indian  -  summer,  and  the 
drowsy  rest  of  nature  filled^is  mother's 
heart  and  brought  to  his  turV  Jlent  spirit 
an  unguessed  measure  of  peace. 

Not  a  word  came  from  the  mountaineer. 
His  mountains  had  swallowed  him,  as  they 
swallow  everything  that  passes  their  blue 
summits.  Once  Anne  saw  in  a  newspaper 
that  the  leaders  in  the  Keaton  -  Stallard 
feud  had  met,  shaken  hands,  and  signed 
a  truce ;  and  that  Boone  Stallard  had 
brought  the  reconciliation  about.  It  was 
the  one  fact  that  she  heard  of  him  through 
the  autumn,  and  she  thought  of  him  a 
good  deal ;  for  she  was  living  alone ; 
she  had  much  time  for  speculations  and 
157 


TPIE  KENTUCKIANS 

dreams :  and,  moreover,  the  way  of  chance 
is  strange.  Had  Stallard  been  an  acute 
student  of  woman's  nature,  had  he  given 
jjrirs  of  study  to  Anne  Bruce's  heart  and 
brain,  and  then  have  deliberately  chosen 
the  way  to  reach  both,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  he  could  have  picked  a  better 
part  or  have  played  it  with  better  skill. 
To  show  his  secret  with  every  act  and 
look,  and  but  once — and  barely  then — 
with  a  spoken  word ;  to  trouble  her  with 
no  exactions ;  to  give  all,  in  a  word,  and 
ask  nothing;  to  be  strong — so  strong  as 
to  make  her  feel,  with  a  vague  dissatis 
faction,  that  there  was  in  him.  something 
stronger  even  than  his  love  for  her,  and 
then  to  pass  out  of  her  life  as  silently  as 
he  came  into  it — to  pass  on  and  out  of 
life  altogether  for  aught  she  knew — there 
was  hardly  a  detail  left  undone.  For  she 
read,  later,  that  the  truce  was  broken 
once  more ;  she  saw  Buck  Stallard's  name 
among  the  prisoners  whose  time  was  done, 
158 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  that  surprised  her  and  gave  her  great 
relief ;  that  his  crime  was  complicity  in  a 
feud  —  not  murder — and  that  perplexed 
her  and  made  her  wonder.  Then  came 
ne\vs  of  a  fight  in  which  Buck  had  taken 
part  and  two  Stallards  were  killed.  One 
of  them  might  have  been  Boone.  Any 
other  than  he  would  have  sent  her  word, 
if  he  were  alive.  Silence  in  another  man 
would  have  been  inexplicable — it  meant 
nothing  in  Stallard.  He  had  never  so 
much  as  said  that  he  was  coming  back; 
he  had  said,  indeed,  that  he  would  not  turn 
over  his  hand  for  the  chance  to  return. 
He  had  said  that — and  yet  he  loved  her : 
he  had  loved  no  other;  his  love,  born  years 
ago  with  a  look,  had  suffered  no  change, 
no  displacement :  all  this  he  had  given  her 
to  understand  as  plainly  as  he  could  have 
put  it  into  words.  She  would  have  smiled 
at  such  a  tale  in  another  man,  and  yet  she 
hardly  wondered  at  it  in  Stallard :  she 
simply  thought  it  strange  that  fate  had 
159 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

made  it  so.  Now  he  was  gone — gone  for 
good,  as  far  as  she  knew.  It  would  have 
been  beyond  reason  in  another  man — it 
meant  nothing  in  an  inscrutable  enigma 
like  him.  He  was  dead,  even,  as  far  as 
she  knew ;  he  might  be  and  she  not 
know ;  for  once  she  had  gone  so  far  as  to 
write  Colton,  who,  too,  had  heard  not  a 
word.  So,  day  by  day,  wondering,  fear 
ing,  thinking — more  than  was  good  for 
her,  good  as  it  all  was  for  Stallard's  place 
in  her  heart — Anne  had  to  wait  and  be 
patient  till  Christmas  should  come  and 
the  new  year,  when  the  session  would 
open  again.  Then  she  would  know,  and 
not  till  then. 

One  thing  only  was  there  for  her  to 
know  that  summer,  that  would  have  dis 
tressed  her  less  than  news  of  his  death, 
and  that  was  the  storm  and  stress  of  his' 
life.  He  had  told  Anne  the  truth.  lie 
had  gone  home  with  the  resolution  not  to 
lift  hand  or  foot  to  secure  his  nomination. 
160 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

Apparently  no  move  was  necessary ;  for, 
by  the  terras  of  the  truce,  Mace  Keaton 
had  left  the  mountains  for  a  year,  to  give 
the  heated  blood  of  both  factions  time  to 
cool;  and,  without  Mace,  there  was  no 
man  to  oppose  him.  So  Boone  Stallard 
gathered  his  mother's  thin  corn  in  peace, 
as  did  other  Stallards  and  Keatons  their 
corn,  and  it  was  the  first  summer  in 
many  years  that  many  of  either  name  had 
worked  in  the  fields,  without  a  rifle  close 
at  hand  and  the  fear  of  an  enemy  lurking 
near  in  ambush.  It  was  a  time  of  inner 
tumult  to  the  mountaineer,  for  it  was 
an  old  story  retold  now — his  coming  back 
home,  his  revulsion  from  its  narrow  life ; 
the  rough  talk  of  his  friends  in  the  pres 
ence  of  their  daughters  and  wives;  the 
rustic  uncouthness  of  the  young  women ; 
the  painful  pity  that  attacked  him  when 
he  newly  realized  the  hard  lot  of  his 
mother  and  sister,  whose  unconsciousness 
made  the  pathos  of  it  the  more  piteous; 

L  161 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

to  know  how  helpless  he  was  to  aid  them 
in  more  than  the  simple  needs  of  exist 
ence  ;  how  beyond  him  to  broaden  or  up 
lift  them,  so  crystallized  were  they  in  the 
way  of  life  that  had  been  moulded  for 
them  so  long.  Contrast — it  was  all  bit 
ter,  hopeless  contrast,  when  he  saw  his 
mother  in  the  cabin  at  night  with  her 
pipe ;  his  sister  with  hers,  now ;  the  neigh 
bors  drifting  in  with  hats  on,  and  bare 
footed  sometimes — men  and  women ;  the 
talk — it  struck  him  now  Avith  ludicrous  in 
consistency — of  homicide  and  the  Bible, 
the  last  killing  and  the  doctrine  of  orig 
inal  sin — from  the  same  lips,  with  hardly 
a  breath  to  bridge  the  chasm  between. 
Even  in  his  early  days,  a  sullen  rebellion 
against  the  chains  of  birth  would  break 
loose  within  him ;  and  now,  with  Anne's 
face  always  looking  from  water,  mist,  and 
moonlight,  the  rebellion  was  fierce ;  and 
half-crazed  sometimes,  he  would  start  up 
the  mountain,  after  his  work  was  done, 

162 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

and  climb  until  there  was  no  leaf  between 
him  and  the  stars.  There  he  would  have 
it  out  with  his  own  soul,  and  with  the 
wide  heaven  that  had  put  him  where  he 
was  and  did  not  chain  him  there.  And 
there  his  strong  courage  upheld  him,  even 
when  he  was  deepest  sunk  in  helplessness, 
and  he  would  go  down  under  cover  of 
darkness  to  look  at  the  old,  patient,  un- 
embittered  face  of  his  mother,  and  some 
times  he  would  go  to  bed  with  a  half-born 
resolution,  since  he  was  cast  there,  to  stay 
there  and  share  their  fate,  and  not  try  to 
breathe  an  air  that  was  thin  for  him  and 
would  stifle  them.  Then  would  it  come 
over  him,  with  an  awful  sense  of  desola 
tion,  how  unspeakably  absurd  were  the 
high- wrought  dreams  that  every  thought 
of  Anne  once  brought  him.  Where  was 
the  place  for  her?  For  the  delicately 
nurtured,  exquisitely  dressed,  fastidious 
girl  who,  with  all  the  favor  she  had 
shown  him,  yet  seemed  as  distant  from 
163 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  rough  background  that  lay  close  be 
hind  his  life,  as  though  her  home  were 
the  clouds  and  his  the  earth  forever. 
But  it  was  his  second  self  that  spoke  in 
this  way — the  self  that  was  born  of  con 
tact  with  civilization ;  for,  whether  it  be 
the  pride  of  independence  or  the  com 
placence  of  isolation,  the  mountaineer, 
recognizing  no  social  chasm,  believes  deep 
down  in  his  heart  that  he  is  the  peer  of 
any  and  the  inferior  of  none.  Even  with 
Stallard,  this  feeling  was  not  dead,  and, 
with  him,  in  the  end,  little  that  was  an 
tagonism  counted  for  more  than  the 
weight  of  a  straw,  when  into  one  cup 
all  his  doubts,  speculations,  and  purposes 
were  strained  at  last — the  cup  of  fatalism, 
from  which  he  had  drunk  deep  at  birth, 
in  his  rearing,  from  the  grim  mountains 
that  had  cradled  him — the  draught  that 
gave  him  his  strength  and  drove  him  for 
ward  when,  without  it,  he  would  have 
shrunk  back  and  would  have  passed  from  the 
164 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

earth  to  count  for  little  more  on  the  stage 
of  action  than  the  daily  shadow  of  Black 
Rock  to  and  fro  across  the  Cumberland. 
What  is  to  be,  will  be.  He  was  not  to 
blame  that  his  ways  were  not  the  ways 
of  his  people ;  his  aspirations  were  not  his 
own — whence  they  came,  God  only  knew. 
He  had  not  striven  to  gain  Anne  Bruce's 
favor.  He  had  not  asked  to  take  an 
other  place  than  the  place  to  which  he 
was  born.  He  had  asked  nothing  of 
friend  or  foe,  and  he  had  nothing  to  ask 
now.  Fate  had  put  him  where  he  was; 
fate  might  take  him  out:  very  well,  he 
would  go.  And  whether  he  went  or 
stayed,  he  would  do  his  duty  just  the 
same.  Such  was  his  final  thought;  and 
no  man  ever  watched  for  the  gleam  that 
flashes  from  within  as  Boone  Stallard 
hearkened  to  the  inner  voice  that  had 
but  to  whisper  to  be  obeyed.  The  people 
wanted  him  to  go  back  to  the  capital; 
very  well,  he  would  go  back.  That  was 
165 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

what  he  told  the  Stallards  at  the  court 
house  one  Saturday  afternoon,  and  when 
he  started  for  home,  his  brain  swam  with 
the  thought  of  what  must  come.  Respon 
sibility  had  ceased  for  him — it  was  fate 
pointing  the  way  beyond  where  he  had 
dared  to  go.  There  was  no  turning  back, 
then,  when  a  little  later  came  the  crisis 
in  his  mountain  life.  Mace  Keaton  ap 
peared  one  morning  against  the  express 
terms  of  the  truce — drunk  and  defiant. 
More,  a  little  later  he  announced  himself 
as  a  candidate  to  oppose  Boone  Stallard ; 
more  still,  day  by  day  the  startling  rumor 
that  the  Keatons  meant  to  uphold  his  re 
turn  and  support  his  claim  crystallized 
into  certain  fact.  There  was  no  doubt 
that  Mace  Keaton  was  acting  from  bitter 
personal  hatred  of  Boone,  and  the  Stal 
lard  leaders  watched  the  latter  closely 
and  with  fear.  Always  he  had  steered 
his  course  clear  of  the  bloody  run  of 
feudal  feeling.  His  acceptance  of  the 

166 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

nomination  meant  open  enmity  to  the 
Keatons,  open  arrayal  with  them ;  it 
would  make  him  the  Stallard  leader  for 
the  years  to  come.  And  they  knew  that 
he  knew  the  penalty  of  his  choice.  Ap 
parently  he  took  no  time  to  make  up  his 
mind.  Straight  and  clear  came  his  an 
swer  at  once — he  would  run  :  the  Stallards 
wanted  him ;  Mace  Keaton  had  violated 
the  bond  and  so  had  his  friends ;  the  one 
had  no  right  there — his  friends  no  right  to 
stand  by  him  when  he  was  plainly  in  the 
wrong. 

It  was  a  jubilee  for  the  Stallards — this 
dictum.  And  all  at  once  the  burden  of 
leadership,  the  responsibility  of  it  and  the 
terrible  risk,  were  shifted  in  a  day  from 
shoulders  that  had  long  borne  them  to 
shoulders  that  had  been  well  trained  by 
other  burdens  to  take  on  more — if  more 
had  to  be  borne.  The  truce  not  to  take 
up  arms  held ;  and  the  Keatons  felt  honor 
bound  to  keep  the  more  rigidly  to  it  in 
167 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

other  particulars,  having  so  grossly  vio 
lated  it  in  one.  So  the  conflict  began 
peaceably  enough.  But  the  convention 
was  to  come,  and  nobody  had  a  doubt  as 
to  what  that  would  bring  to  pass.  Boone 
Stallard  was  in  the  fend  at  last. 


XII 

CHRISTMAS  passed  and  the  time  was  nigh. 
The  House  was  open ;  new  matting  had 
been  laid;  there  were  divans  in  the  lob 
bies  ;  the  cloak-rooms  and  the  library  were 
fresh  and  clean  and  the  flags  were  newly 
furled.  In  the  Lower  House  a  good-look 
ing  mulatto  was  tacking  to  the  desks 
cards  that  bore  the  members'  names.  A 
portrait  of  Washington  hung  above  the 
dingy  gold  eagle  on  the  Speaker's  chair. 
To  his  right  Daniel  Boone  sat  on  a  log  in 
a  sylvan  bower,  cocking  his  rifle  —  with 
a  vista,  cut  by  the  artist,  through  thick 
woods  to  the  placid  Ohio.  To  the  left 
was  Lafayette,  hat  in  hand,  and  strolling 
near  a  cliff  that  his  preoccupation  made 
perilous.  Each  picture  was  ticketed,  per- 

169 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

haps  to  save  unwary  rustics  the  morti 
fication  that  the  memories  o£  innocent 
questions  would  later  bring.  A  few  old 
members  were  writing  in  their  seats.  A 
pompous  new  one  was  walking  around  his 
desk,  looking  at  his  own  name  openly  once, 
then  furtively  again  and  again. 

Passing  the  Senate  door,  one  saw  the 
tall  portrait  of  the  great  Commoner,  his 
face  smiling  but  imperious.  Visitors  were 
coming  up  and  going  down  the  oval  stone 
stairway.  Out  on  the  steps  was  a  "lady 
candidate  "  for  librarian,  with  an  imitation 
seal-skin  thrown  back  and  a  bunch  of  car 
nations  at  her  breast — smiling  up  into  the 
flattered  eyes  of  a  very  old  statesman. 
Pushing  a  wheelbarrow  towards  the  old 
iron  gate  was  a  trusty  in  stripes — a  sullen 
fellow  with  a  heavy  jaw  and  a  disfigured 
face.  Over  in  the  gray  hotel  of  Kentucky 
marble,  a  crowd  of  tobacco-chewing  poli 
ticians  were  wrangling  about  the  Speaker- 
ship  for  the  coming  term.  The  parlor  was 
1TO 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

full  of  their  wives  and  children.  Outside, 
the  day  \vas  clear,  cloudless,  brilliant,  and 
warm,  though  along  the  road  the  moss 
was  sprinkled  with  snow,  and  the  hollows 
in  the  black  hay-stacks  out  in  the  brown 
fields  were  plump  and  white.  Out  there 
the  hazels,  like  the  trees,  were  bending 
from  the  west — bent  by  the  wind  that 
blows  ever  from  the  sun.  The  far  dis 
tance  was  hazy,  dreamlike,  reminiscent, 
and  the  mood  of  the  horizon  caught  Anne 
when  she  turned  with  Katherine,  on  the 
hill,  to  look  at  the  yellow  western  light, 
and  held  her  while  she  walked  back  to  the 
smoky  town.  Marshall  was  back ;  so  was 
Stallard.  No  opponent  dared  to  face 
Marshall  in  his  own  party,  and  the  con 
flict  in  his  county  of  rock-ribbed  democ 
racy  was  always,  for  the  other  side,  a 
matter  merely  of  form.  So  far  there  had 
never  been  any  need  for  him  to  take  a 
thought  for  his  political  morrow,  and,  as 
usual,  he  stayed  quietly  at  home,  and 
171 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

passed,  as  usual,  into  his  honors  without 
opposition. 

It  was  Colton  who  had  told  her  about 
Stallard.  He  had  got  the  story  from  Jack 
Mockaby,  a  mountain  member  who  had 
been  at  the  convention  in  Roland.  Stal 
lard  stormed  through  the  little  court-house 
like  a  mad  lion,  shaking  his  finger  in  Mace 
Keaton's  face,  defying  him  and  his  clan ; 
and  the  magnificent  audacity  of  the  per 
formance  so  dazed  his  adversaries  that 
they  finally  led  Keaton  from  the  court 
house  and  left  the  nomination  to  Stallard, 
at  the  cost  of  a  lifetime  of  peace,  at  the 
cost  some  day  of  his  life,  maybe.  He  was 
openly  the  leader  of  the  Stallards  now. 
Pistols  were  drawn  that  day  after  the 
Keatons  came  out  from  the  spell  of  Stal- 
lard's  cyclonic  oratory,  and  it  was  all  but 
necessary  for  Boone  to  take  up  a  gun,  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  against  his  fellow- 
man.  At  the  last  moment,  Stallard  had 
even  been  in  doubt  about  leaving  home 
172 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

for  the  capital,  questioning  whether  his 
duty  were  at  one  place  or  the  other.  Any 
day  he  might  need  to  go  back  to  a  mortal 
conflict ;  and  then,  in  the  words  of  the 
mountain  member  which  were  familiar  in 
Anne's  memory,  "  there'd  be  Billy-hell  to 
pay  when  he  did."  Marshall  knew  all 
this,  and  already  it  was  plain  that  he  and 
Stallard  would  be  contestants  for  the 
Speakership.  The  old  fight  for  disruption 
would  surely  come  up  again,  and  before 
Anne's  eyes  was  nowhere  the  light  of 
peace.  It  was  a  strange  wrench  from  the 
placid  run  of  her  own  life — to  have  her 
sympathies  drawn  into  such  a  current  of 
mediaeval  barbarism.  There  had  been  a 
great  deal  in  the  papers  about  the  feud : 
about  the  people  who  took  part  in  it ;  the 
method  of  warfare — ambushing  from  be 
hind  trees,  lying  in  wait  along  the  road 
side,  calling  men  to  their  own  doors  and 
shooting  them  down ;  worse  still,  cowards 
who  had  a  little  money  paying  assassins 

173 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

a  petty  sum  to  do  their  bloody  work. 
Usually,  it  was  said,  one  faction  of  the 
two  rarely  resorted  to  these  means,  and  in 
this  feud  the  Stallards  had  kept  aloof  from 
such  hideous  practices.  That  helped  check 
Anne's  growing  horror,  but  it  was  incred 
ible  barbarism,  and  when  she  went  back 
to  the  Mansion  there  appeared,  as  if  to 
clinch  the  truth  of  what  she  had  read,  the 
only  figure  she  had  ever  seen  that  might 
embody  such  evil.  The  warden  would 
send  over  another  trusty  to  take  young 
Buck's  place,  her  father  said,  and  next 
morning  she  saw  at  the  gate  the  sinister 
face  of  the  convict  with  the  sunken  cheek, 
and  Anne  was  transfixed.  He,  too,  was  a 
mountaineer.  Stallard  was  one  possibility 
of  that  life — here  was  another.  She  had 
the  man  told  that  there  was  nothing  for 
him  to  do ;  and  it  was  on  her  lips  to  ask 
her  father  then  and  there  just  what  young- 
Buck  had  done,  but  her  delicate  honor  for 
bade — that,  Stallard  was  going  to  tell  her. 
174 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

Why,  she  asked  herself,  passionately,  did 
he  not  wrench  loose  wholly  from  such  a 
life  and  from  such  people?  Already  he 
had  answered  the  question — without  cow 
ardice  and  disloyalty  he  could  not.  It 
was  not  till  then  that  she  fully  realized  the 
mountaineer's  strange  predicament:  his 
duty  lay  where  he  was ;  and  if  he  could 
shake  himself  free,  what  then?  The  in 
stincts  that  go  with  birth,  the  traits  of 
character  that  grow  with  the  training  of 
childhood,  the  graces  and  culture  that  come 
with  later  associations,  could  never  be  his. 
Without  them  he  would  always  be  at  a 
conscious  disadvantage,  and  his  pride 
would  allow  him  no  peace.  For  there  was 
nothing  in  Stallard  of  that  lurking  hatred 
of  the  born  gentleman,  which  she  had  no 
ticed  in  other  self-made  men:  the  bitter 
jealousy  of  him,  the  contemptuous  dispar 
agement  of  his  high  claims  and  exactions. 
The  mountaineer's  bitterness  was  that  he 
had  not  had  the  chance  to  be  and  to  be- 
175 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

come  all  that  was  possible  for  a  man.  He 
was  doing  his  best  to  make  good  what 
had  been  denied  him;  he  would  always  do 
that.  But  meanwhile — with  lips  sealed  for 
some  reason  —  he  was  as  helpless  in  the 
web  of  circumstance  as  a  fly  in  a  spider's 
toils ;  and  it  was  his  own  strength  that 
bound  him. 

Stallard  had  not  come  to  see  her;  she 
did  not  know  that  he  would  come,  even 
if  he  were  not  so  busy — if  the  stress  of 
affairs  were  not  so  great.  Both  the  men 
she  had  seen  but  once.  She  was  standing 
on  the  steps  of  the  Mansion  when  Mar 
shall  appeared  on  the  other  side  of  the 
street.  She  expected  him  to  lift  his  hat 
and  pass  on,  but,  to  her  surprise,  he  had 
come  across  and  shaken  hands  with  fine 
control,  and  had  asked  that  he  might  have 
a  long  talk  with  her  soon.  The  days  of 
thought  and  settled  purpose  had  wrought 
their  story  that  summer  in  his  face,  which 
was  brown,  ruddy,  and  firm.  Some  change 

176 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

had  taken  place  in  him  which  made  her 
wonder;  and  some  change  had  come  over 
Stallard.  Him  she  had  seen  from  the 
drawing-room  window.  He,  too,  was  pass 
ing  by  in  deep  thought,  and  the  sight  of 
his  face  choked  her — so  lean  and  worn  was 
it.  It  had  a  hunted  and  wary  look — Colton 
had  spoken  to  her  of  that — the  look  of  a 
man  ever  at  high  tension,  on  constant  guard 
against  an  enemy,  on  guard  for  his  life. 

To  everybody,  the  change  in  both  was 
quickly  apparent.  Marshall  had  come 
back  with  the  purpose  of  being  consider 
ate,  temperate,  and  just.  Stallard's  timid 
ity  was  gone.  He  had  taken  on  a  new 
front,  he  was  aggressive  at  the  start,  and 
Marshall,  to  his  surprise  and  vexation, 
found  himself  where  he  had  always  held 
Stallard — on  the  defensive.  On  the  morn 
ing  of  the  first  day  in  the  caucus,  to  decide 
certain  preliminary  matters,  Marshall's 
hot  temper  flared  up,  and  there  was  a  light 
ning  cross-fire  between  the  two  men.  It 
M  177 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

was  as  plain  as  noonday  that  a  clash  would 
come.  Marshall  had  become  a  little  un 
popular;  his  haughtiness  offended  some 
and  his  wealth  others ;  some  were  jealous 
of  him.  These,  with  the  following  upon 
which  Stallard.  could  count,  were  enough 
to  make  the  contest  of  grave  doubt  to 
Marshall's  friends,  and  the  situation  did 
not  help  Marshall,  who  brooked  such  ri 
valry  with  little  tolerance  and  little  grace. 
It  was  an  old  tale  for  that  day,  and  one 
not  impossible  now.  At  first,  Stallard  de 
clined  to  arm  himself,  though  Mockaby 
told  him  to  his  face  that  he  was  a  fool 
to  go  unarmed.  Neither  meant  to  make 
an  attack ;  both  believed  an  attack  possi 
ble  ;  both  used  the  plea  of  self-defence ; 
and  when,  at  the  afternoon  session,  the 
lie  all  but  passed,  each  man  went  armed 
the  next  day,  and  the  close  friends  of  each 
were  in  an  unrest  of  expectancy.  And  on 
that  day  Anne's  life  began  to  be  a  melo 
drama  which  she  would  have  ridiculed  had 
178 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

it  passed  before  her  on  the  stage.  At  noon 
she  heard  that  trouble  was  likely,  and  her 
father  told  her  that  ladies  would  not  be 
allowed  to  enter  the  house  that  afternoon. 
So  she  stayed  at  home  and,  as  women  must, 
lay  in  a  dark  room  with  dry  eyes  and  noth 
ing  to  do  but  fear  and  think. 

Meanwhile  Marshall  had  spoken  once, 
briefly  and  bitterly.  Stallard  replied  briefly 
in  kind,  but  with  a  cool  moderation  that 
inflamed  Marshall  more  than  bitterness 
could.  As  Marshall  arose  again,  a  messen 
ger-boy  laid  a  telegram  on  the  mountain 
eer's  desk.  Colton  saw  him  start,  quickly 
break  open  the  yellow  envelope  —  and 
then  saw  every  particle  of  color  leave  his 
face.  There  was  but  one  answer  for  Stal 
lard  when  Marshall  sat  down,  and  had 
the  listeners  been  forced  to  sit  still,  while 
a  bolt  of  lightning  played  under  the  ceil 
ing,  the  face  of  every  man  could  hardly 
have  been  more  intense,  nor  would  Mar 
shall's,  had  he  known  that  it  was  he  whom 
179 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

the  bolt  would  strike.  There  was  but  one 
answer  to  Stallard,  too,  and  Marshall's 
white  silence  was  an  omen  that  the  an 
swer  was  sure  to  come.  He  went  out  be 
fore  the  session  was  quite  over,  and  Mock- 
aby,  preceding  Stallard  a  step,  saw  him 
waiting  near  one  of  the  gray  pillars  at  the 
far  end  of  the  portico,  and  gave  the  moun 
taineer  a  nod  of  warning.  Stallard  pur 
posely  walked  towards  the  other  end,' and 
as  he  stepped  down  on  the  brick  flagging, 
Marshall  stepped  down,  too,  facing  him. 
Men  near  each  of  them  scurried  quickly 
out  of  line.  The  members  coming  out 
stopped  still  about  the  pillars,  and  Mar 
shall's  voice  cut  clearly  through  the  sud 
den  quiet. 

"Stallard,"  he  called,  reaching  for  his 
pistol,  "  we'd  as  well  settle  this  thing  now." 

Stallard  saw  the  movement  and,  moun- 
taineerlike,  thought  Marshall  meant  to 
get  the  advantage.  Like  lightning  his 
own  weapon  flashed,  and  the  two  reports 

180 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

struck  Mockaby's  ear  as  one.  It  was  hasty 
work,  and  both  missed.  Marshall's  revolver 
spoke  again,  as  he  fired,  advancing.  Stal- 
lard  hitched  one  shoulder  slightly  and,  to 
Mockaby's  terror,  looked  do\vn  at  his  pis 
tol,  his  face  unmoved.  Hearing  no  other 
shot,  he  looked  up  again  quickly,  and  stood 
motionless  and  bewildered,  staring  at  Mar 
shall.  Mockaby,  too,  was  staring  helpless 
ly  ;  for  Marshal],  seeing  the  trouble  with 
the  mountaineer's  pistol,  was  quietly  wait 
ing  for  him  to  get  ready  again. 

Stallard  reddened  and  looked  shamed ; 
then,  with  a  turn  of  his  wrist,  he  tossed 
his  weapon  aside.  It  rang  on  the  flagging 
at  Mockaby's  feet,  and  Mockaby  stooped 
mechanically  to  pick  it  up.  "When  he  rose 
upright,  he  saw  Stallard  striding  towards 
Marshall  with  his  hand  outstretched. 
Promptly  -Marshall  stepped  forward  to 
meet  him,  shifting  his  pistol  as  he  came, 
and,  midway,  the  two  men  caught  hands. 
It  was  too  much  for  the  on-lookers :  the 

181 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

strain  of  mortal  expectancy;  the  gallant 
magnanimity  of  the  one,  the  perfect  cour 
age  of  the  other.  Mockaby  was  struck 
dumb,  but  a  hum  of  enthusiasm  rose  be 
hind  him.  One  old  Confederate,  who  had 
stood  at  rigid  attention  against  a  pillar, 
was  wiping  his  eyes,  and  his  mouth  was 
twitching;  and,  as  Stallard  walked  tow 
ards  the  gate,  a  policeman  held  it  open 
for  him,  and  touched  his  corded  slouch  hat 
as  the  mountaineer  passed  through. 

An  hour  later,  he  was  at  the  post-office 
eagerly  breaking  the  seal  of  a  letter  from 
home.  He  read  it  once,  and,  leaning 
against  the  railing,  read  it  again,  with  his 
face  quite  expressionless.  Then  he  took 
his  hat  off  and  walked  bareheaded  up  the 
street.  The  warning  clang  of  a  coming 
train  brought  him  sharply  up  as  he  start 
ed  across  the  track,  and,  reaching  for  his 
watch,  he  found  his  hat  still  in  his  hand. 
With  a  shake  of  his  shoulders,  he  hurried 
to  the  Governor's  office. 
182 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

In  a  little  while  he  came  out  again  with 
a  set  face  and  started  for  his  room.  At 
the  steps  of  the  Mansion  he  looked  at  his 
watch  for  the  third  time  on  his  way  that 
far,  and  with  the  hesitation  of  a  moment 
rang  the  bell.  He  told  the  negro  girl  who 
opened  the  door  to  say  to  her  mistress 
that  he  was  going  away,  and  had  only  a 
minute  in  which  to  say  good-bye.  The 
girl  shrank  from  him,  and  Anne,  who  hap 
pened  to  be  starting  down -stairs,  could 
not  tell  what  he  said,  and  hardly  knew 
his  voice.  Coming  in  from  the  strong 
light  so  suddenly,  he  did  not  see  her;  so, 
with  a  nod  to  the  servant,  she  let  him  pass 
into  the  drawing-room  without  calling  to 
him,  and  stopped  an  instant  at  the  foot  of 
the  stairs,  her  clasp  tightening  on  the  ban 
isters.  She  had  just  heard' of  the  all  but 
mortal  meeting  of  the  two  men — her  eyes 
were  still  wet  with  tears  of  relief.  Mar 
shall  had  just  sent  her  word  that  he  was 
coming  to  the  Mansion  in  an  hour,  and 
188 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

she  was  wondering  why.  Why  was  Stal- 
lard  here? 

The  mountaineer  had  not  sat  down  when 
she  passed  in.  He  was  at  the  window,  and 
he  heard  her  coming  and  turned  quickly. 
He  did  not  offer  to  shake  hands — he  made 
no  greeting,  but  stood  silent,  his  body 
swaying  slightly,  as  it  did  when  he  was 
greatly  moved,  and  he  looked  as  he  looked 
the  first  time  she  saw  him  in  the  State 
House,  and  Anne  felt  the  warning  flutter 
of  some  new  terror  and  steeled  herself. 

"I'm  going  home  to-night,"  he  said. 
"  I  may  not  come  back  very  soon  ...  I  may 
not  come  back  at  all.  And  I've  come  to 
tell  you  good-bye.  It's  come  down  in  the 
mountains.  They've  killed  two  of  my 
cousins.  They've  sent  me  word  " — the 
curious  little  zigzag  streaks  of  red  began 

to  run  up  and  down  his  cheeks  when  he 
V 

stopped  to  gain  self-control — "that  they 

will  sell  my  mother's  cattle,  and — and  hire 
unit  my  sister>    Your  father  says  he  can't 

184 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

help  me.  So  it  all  depends  on  me,  and 
I'm  going  to-night — in  an  hour.  I  don't 
know  that  I'll  get  back  . . .  the  chances  are 
that  I  sha'n't  ...  so  there's  no  need  yet  to 
tell  you  the  one  thing  that  I've  kept  from 
you  .  .  .  that  I've  kept  from  everybody  . . . 
here.  I  shall  tell  it,  if  I  come  back ;  and 
then,  if  you  can  forgive  that,  I  may  have 
something  to  ask  you.  I  can't  speak  the 
words  now,  and  how  I  shall  ever  dare  to 
say  them,  I  don't  know.  I  am  crazy  now, 
I  think  .  .  .  but  you  know,  you  must  know. 
I  am  helpless  before  you — like  a  child. 
You  have  been  very  good  to  me,  and  I 
have  told  you  all  but  one  thing.  I've 
kept  that  back  .  .  .  from  everybody  .  .  .  but 
I  shall  tell  it  ...  to  you.  I'm  going  now. 
I  have  given  my  word  to  the  people  there, 
and  I'm  going  to  keep  it.  You  are  the 
one  person  on  earth  to  me  .  .  .  besides  my 
mother  and  sister .  . .  the  rest  of  the  world 
is  nothing  .  .  .  and  if  you  can  forgive  one 
thing  more,  as  you  have  forgiven  so  much, 
185 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

I  ...  I  shall  make  myself  worthy.  How 
I  shall  work  for  that.  Good-bye  ...  if  I 
don't  come  back  .  .  .  you  will  know  why 
.  .  .  good-bye." 

Already  he  was  starting  for  the  door, 
while  the  girl  stood  silent,  cold,  white. 
To  save  her  soul  she  could  not  utter  a 
word,  and,  like  a  statue,  she  watched  him 
leave  with  a  broken  "God  bless  you  "  that 
gave  her  a  throb  of  pain  to  hear.  She 
heard  the  door  close,  his  heavy  tread 
across  the  porch,  and  she  followed,  open 
ing  the  door  and  looking  down  the  street 
where  he  had  disappeared.  She  saw  a 
figure  coming  towards  her,  but  not  until 
it  had  halted  at  the  bottom  of  the  steps 
was  she  aware  that  it  was  Marshall,  smil 
ing  up  at  her.  It  was  surprising  that  he 
should  appear  just  at  that  moment ;  she 
had  forgotten  that  he  was  to  come,  though 
she  still  held  his  note  in  her  hand.  She 
saw  a  keen,  curious  look  flit  through  his 

O 

eyes,  and  she  felt  the  rush  of  tears  on  her 
186 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

face.  Then  her  father  spoke  from  the 
corner  of  the  steps  below  —  she  had  not 
seen  him  at  all. 

"You  will  win  to-morrow,"  he  said  to 
Marshall.  "Your  rival  has  fled.  There's 
trouble  in  Roland,  and  Stallard  came  to 
me  for  soldiers.  Of  course  I  couldn't  help 
him — nor  could  I  help  approving  his  plan 
to  take  the  matter  in  hand  himself.  I 
don't  blame  him.  It  looks  pretty  serious — 
Why,  Anne !" 

Then  all  at  once  Marshall  seemed  to 
understand ;  for  an  instant  Anne  help 
lessly  met  his  sharp,  straight  gaze,  and 
before  she  could  speak,  he  was  lifting  his 
hat  and  turning  away.  She  started  in 
doors  then,  swerving  slightly,  and  her 
father  caught  her  arm,  thinking  that  she 
had  tripped  on  something  and  was  about 
to  fall. 

Stallard  did  not  appear  in  the  House 
next  morning.  Just  before  the  vote  for 
Speaker  was  cast  the  chairman  read  to  the 
187 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

astonished  members  the  Avithdrawal  from 
the  race,  for  reasons  to  be  hereafter  ex 
plained,  of  the  member  from  Roland. 
There  was  not  a  vote  against  Marshall, 
and  next  day  the  papers  made  public  the 
reason  of  Stallard's  absence.  Mace  Kea- 
ton  had  control  of  Roland  with  his  fac 
tion,  and  was  in  open  defiance.  Stallard 
had  sent  in  to  the  Governor  his  resigna 
tion  from  the  House,  and  had  then  gone 
down  to  make  good  his  word  that  his  peo 
ple  could  take  care  of  themselves.  A  des 
perate  fight  was  imminent  any  hour. 


XIII 

To  meet  death  a  rat  goes  to  his  hole,  a 
lion  to  his  lair ;  the  same  instinct,  perhaps, 
in  the  shadow  of  a  lesser  crisis  even,  sends 
a  man  home.  Marshall  took  the  train 
with  Anne's  face  still  haunting  him  like 
the  face  of  the  dead.  Chance  had  rent 
the  veil,  and  he  had  turned  away,  as  he 
would  have  turned  had  chance  as  sudden 
ly  bared  the  girl's  breast  as  it  had  seemed 
to  bare  her  soul.  The  stupefying  calm 
that  held  him  broke  slowly  as  the  train 
rushed  through  the  winter  fields;  and 
slowly  his  hold  on  himself  began  to  loosen. 
By  the  time  he  was  climbing  into  his 
buggy  he  was  asking  himself  fiercely  what 
the  use  of  it  all  was ;  and,  a  moment  later, 
he  pulled  his  mare  to  her  haunches  before 
189 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

his  club  door,  in  answer  to  an  old  voice 
within  him  that  had  been  still  for  a  long 
while.  He  had  always  stopped  there  in 
the  old  days,  and  it  was  the  habit  of  re 
sisting  the  impulse  since  those  days,  per 
haps,  that  made  him  suddenly  lash  his 
horse  on  now.  The  mare  sprang  ahead 
with  a  frightened  snort,  and  Marshall, 
with  a  half -curse  on  himself  for  his 
thoughtless  cruelty,  called  kindly  to  her 
several  times  to  make  recompense.  Then 
he  settled  back  into  his  big  coat,  and,  a 
little  later,  he  was  on  the  white  turnpike 
again  speeding  home,  with  his  chin  on  his 
breast  and  the  same  fight  in  his  soul  that 
was  there  on  that  other  drive,  when  Stal- 
lard  first  came  into  his  life  and  into  Anne's. 
Only  the  yellow  evening  light  was  almost 
gone  now.  There  was  not  a  bird -note 
from  the  darkening  brown  fields.  The 
sun  was  a  sullen  blotch  of  fire  when  he 
reached  his  gate,  and  the  woods  behind 
the  house  were  black  and  still.  But  his 
190 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

mother  was  waiting  for  him,  and  he  was 
very  tender  with  her  that  night.  She 
knew  something  was  wrong — she  always 
knew ;  but  she  waited  for  him  to  tell,  as 
she  always  did ;  and  there  were  things 
that  he  had  never  told  and  could  never  tell, 
which  she  never  knew  nor  guessed ;  and 
he  was  grateful,  whatever  the  shame  her 
faith  and  his  weakness  brought  to  him. 
The  pantry  door  was  open  when  he  went 
to  his  room,  but  there  was  no  glisten  of 
glassware  from  within.  That  temptation 
had  been  removed  long  ago,  and  it  was 
well  for  him  that  night  that  it  was.  His 
room  was  cold ;  the  white  moon  through 
the  window  looked  cold,  and  the  dead 
fields  and  the  gaunt  moonlit  woods.  The 
whole  world  was  cold,  and  every  riotous 
drop  in  the  veins  of  his  reckless  fore 
fathers  was  running  wild  in  his,  when  he 
went  sleepless  to  bed  and  to  an  all-night 
struggle  that  sent  him  groping  back 
through  his  past  for  the  things  that  were 
191 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

the  stay  of  his  unthinking  childhood.  For 
the  first  time  in  years,  he  was  ready  to  go 
with  his  mother  to  church  next  morning 
when  the  carriage  drove  before  the  door. 
It  was  a  sign  to  her  of  some  unusual  dis 
tress  of  mind,  and  a  grateful  surprise  that 
she  was  too  wise  to  show.  Instinctively 
she  took  him  to  the  old  country  church 
where  she  used  to  take  him  when  he  was 
a  boy;  and,  going  and  coming,  the  little 
school-house  where  he  and  Anne  had  been 
playmates  gave  him  a  sharp  pang ;  but  the 
old  church  that  had  brought  its  sturdy 
walls  and  sturdy  faith  down  from  the 
pioneers,  the  saddle-horses  hitched  to  the 
plank  fence,  the  long  stiles,  with  the  coun 
try  girls  dismounting  in  their  long  black 
skirts,  the  atmosphere  of  reverence,  the 
droning  old  hymns — all  helped  little  by 
little  to  draw  him  back  to  the  faith  from 
which  he  had  started  adrift ;  to  stir  mem 
ories  that  were  good  for  him,  and  to  make 
easier  what  was  to  come.  From  church, 
192 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

several  neighbors  went  home  with  them 
to  dinner,  after  a  custom  of  the  neighbor 
hood  ;  and  it  was  after  they  were  gone 
that  a  negro  boy  brought  the  morning 
paper  to  Marshall's  room.  He  opened  it, 
and  read  one  paragraph  on  the  first  page 
twice — then  lie  threw  the  paper  on  the 
table  and  rose.  It  was  a  terse  telegram 
from  Stallard  to  the  Governor.  The  fight 
was  over,  and  Stallard  was  safe  and  success 
ful.  And  he  was  coming  back.  Marshall's 
acceptance  of  the  fact  and  its  probable 
significance  was  quick,  proud,  and  fiery. 
Only  he  picked  up  his  hat  and  got  quickly 
out  into  the  open  air.  His  mother  was  in 
the  front  yard,  and  he  did  not  want  to  see 
her  quite  yet ;  so  he  went  into  the  parlor, 
where  a  fire  was  still  burning,  and  sat 
down  by  the  window  —  forestalling  the 
days  that  were  at  hand.  He  was  before 
Anne  now,  paying  her  his  tribute  to  Stal 
lard  ;  and  from  the  depths  of  his  unworthy 
satire  rose  the  bitter  fact  that  what  he 
N  193 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

was  saying  to  himself,  and  mentally  to 
Anne,  was  literal  truth — the  mountaineer 
was  worthy.  And  with  this  realization, 
he  suddenly  lost  the  power  to  feel  the 
thousand  subtleties  that  he  had  always  be 
lieved  would  prevent  Anne  from  joining 
her  life  to  Stallard's,  no  matter  what  her 
admiration  for  him,  her  respect,  her  pity, 
or  even  her  love. 

Then,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  jeal 
ousy  started  throbbing  through  him,  and 
he  knew  the  hell  of  two  passions  fighting 
his  soul  at  once.  It  stretched  him  out  on 
the  sofa  where  he  sat,  and  he  lay  there  a 
long  time,  dully  watching  the  evening  sun 
light  as  it  rose  slowly  to  the  face  of  his  boy 
ish  uncle  on  the  wall,  whose  life  and  death 
was  a  tragedy  that  seemed  meant  for  him  to 
play  again.  He  looked  with  a  deeper  sym 
pathy  now  behind  the  smiling  lips  and  the 
reckless  smiling  eyes,  and  with  a  throb  of 
pity  for  him  which  was  half  for  himself,  he 
hurried  out  into  the  woods  and  the  dusk. 

194 


THE  KENTUCK1ANS 

It  was  startling  to  realize  that  nothing, 
not  even  religion  nor  his  mother,  had  gov 
erned  his  life  as  had  his  love  of  Anne. 
Without  her,  it  seemed  that  he  must  lose 
anchor  and  go  adrift.  And  once,  in  the 
night,  sick  with  fever  and  mad  for  a  little 
relief,  he  sprang  from  his  bed  to  take  his 
buggy  and  go  back  to  town  and  lose  him 
self  in  the  old  way.  This  time  it  was  the 
swift  vision  of  his  mother's  face  that 
stopped  him  in  the  middle  of  the  floor — 
his  duty  was  to  her  now — and  forced  him 
in  an  agony  of  helplessness  to  his  knees  in 
the  first  prayer  that  had  been  wrung  from 
him  in  years.  That  was  his  crucial  hour, 
and  he  faced  the  morning,  grateful ;  but 
he  stayed  at  home  that  day  through  dis 
trust  of  himself — and  to  keep  away  from 
the  capital. 

Life  had  almost  begun  anew  for  him  a 

year  ago;  he  believed  now  that,  without 

Anne,  it  must  begin   quite  new.     It  was 

like  walking  back  into  childhood  when  he 

195 


I 


started  out  after  breakfast  on  foot,  and 
every  memory  was  a  healing  comfort. 
When  he  passed  the  spring  -  house,  the 
geese  raised  their  wings  with  a  reedy 
cackling  and,  with  the  ducks,  went  swing 
ing  down  the  riffles,  as  though  they  yet  ex 
pected  him  to  throw  pebbles  at  them.  At 
the  stone  fence,  beyond,  he  stopped  to  look 
at  the  water  bubbling  over  the  water-gap, 
through  which  he  used  to  drop  his  hook 
for  perch  and  catfish.  Then  he  followed 
the  winding  branch  by  a  pig-path,  through 
the  thickly  matted  long  grass,  that  was 
criss-crossed  by  tiny  beaten  roads  that  used 
to  lead  many  a  musk-rat  to  death  in  his 
traps.  A  hawk  was  sweeping  the  field 
with  his  wings,  hovering  close  to  the  grass 
in  his  hunt  for  a  breakfast  of  mice.  The 
old  impulse  came  to  run  back  to  the  house 
for  his  gun,  and  the  gray  bird  swerved 
like  a  glancing  arrow  to  safety  on  a  dead 
tree  far  out  in  the  meadow.  Up  in  the 
sun,  the  hill-side  was  covered  with  sheep. 
196 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

A  ewe  with  one  white  lamb  was  lapping 
water  at  the  grassy  edge  of  the  creek. 

Just^rone  side  of  the  path  lav  another 

/        •]  " 

— (ts  ,twj«,  no  doubt — dead  and  mutilated, 

and  across  the  creek  hung  its  murderer,  a 
robber  crow,  dangling  by  his  wings  from 
a  low  limb,  with  his  penitent  beak  be 
tween  his  feet. 

He  was  not  the  only  thing  on  earth 
that  had  to  suffer.  Life  was  a  chain  of 
suffering,  with  nature  at  one  end  and  nat 
ure  at  the  other;  a  pyramid  of  cruelty 
with  man  at  the  apex  exacting  the  tribute 
of  sacrifice  from  below,  paying  it  right 
and  left  to  the  strong,  and  above  to  the 
unseen.  He  must  take  his  share.  There 
were  other  motives  to  action  in  life  than 
love,  than  duty  to  his  mother — the  duty 
to  those  of  whom  he  had  not  thought 
much,  and  of  whom  suffering  was  teaching 
him  to  think  now :  others  than  himself — 
his  duty  to  the  world  around,  above  and 
below.  He  might  have  drawn  tears  from 
197 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

an  audience  on  that  theme  once  with  his 
tongue  and  his  brain :  it  was  sinking  to 
his  heart  now. 

Anne  was  right;  he  had  made  a  wretch 
ed  use  of  himself.  He  had  been  weak  and 
reckless,  and  wasteful  of  the  time,  energy, 
and  the  talents,  whatever  they  were,  that 
God  had  given  him.  He  had  made  of  his 
love  a  moping  luxury  instead  of  a  motive 
to  deeds  that  were  worth  doing ;  he  was 
selfish  and  degenerate.  He  loved  his  State, 
he  thought,  and  he  was  intensely  proud  of 
it  and  of  his  people.  Yet  there  wras  Stal- 
lard  fighting  like  a  savage  on  its  border — 
that  was  a  stain ;  and  there  was  he  pro 
voking  the  same  man  to  a  deadly  conflict 
at  the  very  seat  of  order  and  law.  Where 
was  the  difference,  except  that  the  moun 
taineer,  as  he  claimed,  had  the  better  right 
to  fight  in  the  one  place  and,  as  Marshall 
admitted,  the  better  excuse  in  the  other. 
It  was  hypocrisy  for  him  to  blame  Stallard 
and  to  justify  himself.  Courage  was  a 
198 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

passionate  ideal  in  him,  as  it  is  in  his  people. 
Human  life  was  worth  less,  he  believed, 
and  was  proud  that  his  State  believed, 
and  would  not  have  it  otherwise,  than 
certain  old-fashioned  ideals  that  were  still 
all-powerful ;  but  was  it  not  possible  to  lift 
life  and  yet  not  lower  those  ideals  at  all  ? 
That  was  something  he  might  have  help 
ed  to  do.  Once,  a  political  career  was 
an  honored  one.  He  could  help  bring  the 
honor  of  it  back.  There  were  consolations, 
too — the  thrill  of  power  as  a  speaker,  the 
exhilaration  of  conflict,  the  pride  in  a 
good  cause — ah!  there  was  much  left  in 
the  world,  even  after  love  was  gone  out. 

All  these  years  it  had  taken  him  to  real 
ize  simple  facts  about  which  he  had  thun 
dered  with  such  confidence  in  college ;  and 
now,  far  out  in  the  woods,  he  lay  on  a 
stone  wall  in  the  warm  sun,  taking  in  the 
comfort  of  his  discovery,  until  the  mellow 
tone  of  the  dinner-bell  rang  noon  across  the 
fields.  From  everywhere  came  answering 

199 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

shouts  from  the  darkies  at  work ;  and 
when  he  climbed  the  yard  fence  going 
home  he  could  hear  the  jingling  traces  of 
the  plough-horses  crowding  into  the  barn 
yard,  and  the  laughing  banter  of  the  dar 
kies  about  the  whitewashed  cabins.  It 
was  all  very  busy  and  peaceful  and  com 
forting,  and  it  was  his  to  have  day  after 
day,  when  he  pleased. 

And  so,  that  afternoon,  it  seemed  a  big 
ger  and  a  kindlier  world  when  he  started 
out  again  through  the  winter  blue-grass, 
past  the  white  tobacco  -  barn,  past  the 
spring  in  the  wToods,  gushing  from  under 
a  rock  over  rich,  bent  grass,  May-green ; 
on  over  brown  turf  and  under  gray  woods 
to  the  "  field  "  where  the  breakers  were  at 
work.  How  he  would  fool  the  birds  that 
croaked  evil  of  him !  All  over  the  hill 
side  the  hemp  lay  in  shining  swaths. 
Two  darkies  were  picking  it  up  with 
wooden  hooks ;  another  was  working  at  a 
brake,  which,  at  that  distance,  looked  ab- 

200 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

surdly  like  a  big  doll-baby  with  tow-linen 
skirts  blowing  in  the  wind.  The  rest  were 
idling  about  a  fire  of  hurds.  The  overseer 
stood  near  with  his  hand  outstretched,  as 
though  he  were  arguing.  He  was  having 
trouble  of  some  kind,  for  but  one  other 
negro  was  at  work,  an  old  fellow  with 
gray  whiskers,  thick  lips,  and  a  striped 
over-suit  of  cotton.  Nobody  could  hear 
Marshall's  tread  on  the  thick  turf. 

"  Hemp  gone  down,  boys,"  the  overseer 
was  saying.  "  Can't  pay  you  more — sorry. 
If  you  don't  like  the  price,  you  needn't 
work.  Nobody's  feelin's  hurt.  Brakes 
won't  go  beggin'." 

The  old  darky  picked  on.  The  brawny 
breaker  swooped  up  a  fresh  armful  with 
his  left  hand,  and,  with  his  right,  brought 
the  heavy  upper  swords  crackling  down 
on  the  stiff  stalks  until  his  figure  was  lost 
in  a  gray  cloud  of  hurds. 

"  Dat's   right,"  said   one   of  the  idlers. 
"  I  ain't  gwine  to  wuck." 
201 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  All  right,"  said  the  overseer.  "  Hit 
the  pike.  Nobody's  feelin's  hurt.  Brakes 
won't  go  beggin'.  Could  'a'  got  hands  in 
town  yesterday,  but  wanted  to  give  you 
boys  a  chance.  Hit  the  pike." 

The  man  at  the  brake  seemed  not  to 
hear.  His  hemp  had  got  bright  and  flex 
ible,  and  it  sank  like  folds  of  iron-gray 
hair  down  through  the  lower  swords, 
which  were  smooth,  shining,  and  curved 
like  the  throat  of  a  harp.  The  idlers  had 
all  started  from  the  fire,  but  only  one 
reached  the  fence  at  the  pike,  and  he 
turned  on  the  top  rail  and  looked  back. 
Slowly,  one  after  another,  the  men  were 
going  to  work.  It  was  Marshall's  own  or 
ders  that  the  shrewd  overseer  had  given 
the  simple  negroes.  There  was  another 
thing  that  he  might  have  done  than  cut 
their  wages  down — he  could  have  taken 
less  profit  for  himself — and  he  did  that 
now. 

"  Give  them  the  old  price,"  he  called,  in 

202 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

a  low  voice,  but  they  heard,  and  a  row  of 
white  teeth  shone  in  every  black  face.  It 
was  to  him  like  light  to  darkness — that 
grateful  flash.  It  helped  the  deeps  to 
open  as  he  turned  away.  Love  was  not 
everything.  All  day  that  fact  had  beat 
in  on  him  persistently,  and  it  was  strange 
that  never  once  came  with  it  the  suspi 
cion  that  Anne  too  might  know  that,  with 
a  man,  love  should  not  be  everything ; 
that  she  might  be  generous  enough  to  ac 
cept  the  fact ;  unselfish  enough  to  exact  it 
of  him ;  that  his  love  for  her  was  a  weak 
ness  that  kept  her  from  perfect  respect 
for  him  as  long  as  it  kept  him  from  paying 
the  debt  that  he  owed  to  his  State,  his 
name,  and  to  himself;  and  that,  being  a 
goal  in  itself,  her  love  might  lose  value 
when  he  had  gained  it.  Stallard  was  com 
ing  back.  Until  Anne  should  open  her 
lips,  it  was  no  more  his  business  than  if  he 
had  never  known  her.  Again  and  again 
the  thought  had  forced  itself  on  him,  with 
203 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

some  bitterness,  that  she  had  not  been  al 
together  just  and  frank.  Now  he  straight 
way  gave  her  absolution.  Women  did 
not  understand  friendship  as  men  did ; 
besides,  both  were  not  friends  —  he  was 
a  lover.  She  may  not  have  wanted  to 
pain  him.  The  flash  may  have  come  to 
her  as  to  him  from  a  clear  sky.  But  it 
had  come,  and  his  way  was  straight,  and 
it  led  him  into  a  calm  that  was  like  the 
quiet  sunset  that  he  faced,  turning  home 
ward. 

Away  off  in  the  east,  across  the  gently 
concave  sky,  some  little  blue  clouds  had 
begun  to  turn  golden.  The  air  had  grown 
cold  and  the  shadows  long.  The  crows 
were  coming  home  to  roost;  there  was  a 
line  of  black  specks  across  the  low  even 
band  of  yellow  that  lay  across  the  west 
like  a  stubble  wheat-field  at  noon.  Against 
this  the  trees,  with  trunks  invisible,  were 
set  bright,  sharp,  and  clear ;  and  when  he 
reached  the  brow  of  a  low  hill  he  saw, 

204 


THE  KENTUCKIA.NS 

black  and  distinct  against  the  after-glow, 
the  last  of  the  many  pictures  that  were 
etched  on  his  brain  that  day  to  stay — the 
dim  sloping  barn,  the  black  cedars  with 
one  light  shining  through  them,  and,  above, 
the  roof  that  sheltered  his  mother,  his 
father's  memory,  and  a  name  of  which, 
henceforth,  please  God,  he  should  make 
himself  worthy. 

At  once  he  put  his  purpose  to  a  bitter 
test,  when  he  reached  the  darkened  house, 
by  going  up-stairs  and  straight  to  his 
book  of  memories.  And  there,  in  the 
dusk,  he  tore  out  the  leaves  one  by  one 
and  heaped  them  in  the  grate.  Then  he 
set  them  afire  and  left  the  room  that  he 
might  not  see  them  burn. 

The  blaze  lit  up  the  room  and  showed 
the  picture  of  Anne  on  the  mantel — in 
white  muslin,  with  a  blue  ribbon  about 
her  throat  and  a  Leghorn  hat  in  her  lap. 
It  showed,  too,  the  paper  on  the  tablo, 
where  Marshall  had  thrown  it  the  day  be- 

205 


V 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

fore,  and  by  the  light  one  could  have  read 
Stallard's  message  to  the  Governor  —  it 
was  as  laconic  as  Caesar's : 

"  I  told  you  I  should  retake  ray  fireside. 
It's  done." 


XIV 

COLTON  himself  had  gone  to  the  scene  of 
the  conflict,  and,  on  the  second  day,  the 
people  in  the  capital  read  the  story  of  the 
fight :  and  nothing  was  lost  to  it,  nor  to 
Stallard,  in  the  telling.  Colton  had  got 
the  mountaineer's  terse  message  to  the 
Governor,  and  the  ring  of  it  and  the  pas 
sion  for  analogy  spun  the  story  around  a 
circuit  that  made  Stallard  notorious.  The 
mountaineer  had  led  his  law-and-order 
party  into  the  town,  as  a  sheriff's  posse, 
at  daybreak.  At  that  hour  the  sheriff 
disappeared  and  Stallard  alone  was  in 
command.  His  coolness,  witnesses  said, 
•was  extraordinary.  One  man  had  seen 
him  stop  shooting  in  the  heat  of  the  fight, 
deliberately  touch  the  muzzle  of  his  Win- 
207 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

Chester  to  the  ground,  and,  while  two 
Keatons  were  cross-firing  at  him,  deliber 
ately  resume  again.  He  was  nervous,  he 
explained  afterwards,  having  been  without 
sleep  and  on  an  intense  strain  for  forty- 
eight  hours,  and  he  had  been  told  that,  in 
a  fight,  it  would  calm  a  man  simply  to 
touch  his  gun  to  the  earth.  Evidently  it 
did  calm  him,  for  at  his  first  shot  there 
after  a  Keaton  dropped  to  the  ground 
with  a  broken  shoulder.  Mace  Keaton 
and  three  others  would  give  no  further 
trouble,  Colton  concluded ;  and,  indeed, 
the  feud  in  that  county  was  done.  The 
intimidated  were  plucking  up  heart,  and 
the  good  men  of  the  county  were  taking 
Stallard's  part.  Several  ringleaders  had 
been  arrested,  and  would  be  sent  to  the 
blue-grass  for  trial.  Boone  Stallard  had 
made  his  word  good. 

That  afternoon  Marshall  asked  that  his 
old  bill  for  disruption  be  voted  down,  gave 
Stallard  a  eulogy,  and  went  home,  half  ill. 
208 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

The  House  entered  a  unanimous  protest 
\  against  the  mountaineer's  resignation  of  his 
seat,  though  Colton  had  written  that  Stal- 
lard  Avould  return  to  the  capital  for  only  a 
few  days,  and  would  go  back,  then,  where 
he  was  needed — home. 

A  Aveek  later,  Marshall  and  the  moun 
taineer  reached  the  capital  on  the  same 
day.  As  the  purpose  of  both  was  the 
same,  it  was  not  unnatural  that,  when 
Marshall  came  to  see  Anne  in  the  after 
noon,  she  should  have  just  received  a  note 
from  Stallard,  asking  if  he  could  come  that 
night.  She  was  in  the  haze  of  great  men 
tal  distress  when  Marshall's  name  was 
brought  to  her;  she  was  stifling  for  the 
open  air,  and  the  day  was  a  sunny  promise 
of  spring — a  day  that  may  stand  sharply 
out  in  any  season  as  a  forecast  of  the  next 
to  come.  So  Anne  came  down  dressed 
for  a  walk,  and  it  was  a  trick  of  the  fate 
whose  hand  seemed  ever  at  Stallard's  throat 
that  led  the  three  together  on  the  hill. 
o  209 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

As  they  passed  through  the  old  bridge 
they  met  several  people  driving — so  warm 
was  the  air — and  when  they  turned  off 
from  the  river,  Anne  directed  Marshall's 
attention  up  the  hill  and  smiled. 

"I'm  not  as  freakish  as  you  might 
think,"  she  said. 

Colton  and  Katherine  were  far  above 
them,  walking  slowly,  and  when  they 
reached  the  curve  of  the  road,  Colton  was 
waving  at  them  from  the  other  end  of  the 
segment  and  close  to  the  crest  of  the  hill. 
Twice  he  pointed  significantly  towards  the 
road  below  him,  and,  in  a  moment,  Anne 
saw  why.  Stallard's  tall  figure  was  mov 
ing  slowly  up  the  pike,  with  his  hands 
clasped  behind  him,  and  his  head  bent  far 
over.  The  gate  at  the  oak-tree  was  oppo 
site,  and  Anne  turned  towards  it  from  the 
road.  Marshall,  seeing  Stallard  just  then, 
knew  why,  and  turned,  too,  without  a 
word.  Had  a  thunder-cloud  swept  sud 
denly  over  the  sun,  the  day  could  not  have 
210 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

been  more  swiftly  darkened  for  both ;  for 
Anne's  silent  recoil  was  to  Marshall  an 
other  surprised  confession,  however  vague, 
and  had  Anne  but  glanced  at  him  she 
would  have  known  that  with  him,  too,  a 
decisive  moment  was  at  hand.  She  could 
not  help  looking  back,  even  after  she  had 
passed  through  the  gate  and  was  follow 
ing  Marshall  up  the  path.  The  moun 
taineer  had  turned,  and  was  walking  down 
the  road,  his  figure  unchanged.  While  she 
looked,  he  slowly  turned  again,  as  though 
he  were  pacing  to  and  fro,  waiting  for 
some  one.  He  looked  weak  and  he  looked 
wretched,  and  the  girl's  breath  came  hard. 
The  mountaineer  had  come  back  to  tell 
her  what  she  already  knew,  that  Buck,  the 
young  trusty  who  had  worked  in  her 
garden,  was  the  brother  of  whom  he  had 
spoken,  and  to  ask  her — what  ?  And  what 
should  she  say?  It  was  plain  now — his 
course  from  the  beginning:  his  struggle 
with  his  duty  to  his  people,  his  temptation 
211 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

to  hide  from  the  world  the  one  thing  that 
he  had  left  untold  to  her.  If  she  forgave 
that — and  she  had — he  meant  to  ask  her — 
she  well  knew  what — and  what  should  she 
say  ?  What  could  she  say  ?  For  days  she 
had  not  been  able  to  think  of  anything  else 
— she  could  think  of  nothing  else  now.  The 
horror  of  it  all  had  swept  freshly  over  her 
after  the  relief  of  Stallard's  safety  came — 
horror  at  what  he  had  done,  though  she 
knew  she  would  have  despised  him  had  he 
even  hesitated  doing  it ;  horror  at  the  life 
with  which  he  was  so  mercilessly  linked,  of 
which  she  knew  so  little,  and  from  which 
she  was  beginning  to  shrink  as  she  shrank 
from  the  terrible  convict  who  typified  to 
her  all  the  evil  she  had  heard,  and  was  the 
one  distinct  figure  in  the  awful  darkness  of 
which  she  dreamed.  And  yet,  one  by  one, 
the  barriers  that  would  have  made  Stal 
lard's  question  absurd  a  year  ago  had 
slowly  fallen  until  now  it  troubled  her  as 
nothing  else  of  the  kind  ever  had.  Never 
212 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

had  love  in  another  man  thrilled  her  as 
it  thrilled  her  in  Stallard — that  much  was 
sure.  She  had  for  him  perfect  respect, 
high  admiration,  deep  pity  —  what  else 
more  she  did  not  know. 

It  was  odd  that  Marshall  should  stop  at 
the  same  tree  where  she  and  Stallard  had 
stopped  nearly  a  year  before ;  that  she 
should  sit  quite  mechanically  on  the  same 
root  where  she  had  sat  before ;  odd  that 
he  should  lie  where  Stallard  had  lain. 
The  contrast  was  marked  now  between 
the  clean,  graceful  figure  stretched  easily 
on  the  sun-warmed,  yellow  grass  and  the 
loose,  powerful  bulk  of  the  mountaineer. 
She  remembered  Stallard's  unshorn  head, 
looking  now  at  Marshall's  carefully  kept 
brown  hair.  The  sunlight  showed  its 
slight  tendency  to  crinkle  ;  she  had  alwa}Ts 
hated  that,  but  no  more,  she  knew,  than 
did  he.  It  was  odd  that  so  slight  a  thing 
should  so  worry  her  now.  The  faces  of 
both  were  smooth,  and,  to  Anne's  search- 

213 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

ing  insight,  the  life  of  both  was  written 
plain,  except  for  one  dark  spot  from  which, 
in  each,  she  shrank.  It  had  kept  her  from 
fully  trusting  one ;  it  had  held  her  some 
times  in  an  unaccountable  dread  of  the 
other.  Marshall  was  not  gaining  ground 
as  he  lay  there  with  his  hat  tilted  over  his 
eyes  and  a  blade  of  withered  grass  between 
his  teeth — easy,  indolent,  an  image  to  her 
of  wasting  power — for  Anne  was  thinking 
of  Stallard  down  in  the  road,  and  it  was 
well  for  him  that  he  began  to  speak.  No 
woman  could  listen  with  indifference  to  a 
voice  that  was  so  rich  and  low ;  that  told 
all  the  good  in  him  and  none  of  the  evil. 

"  Anne,"  he  said,  and  the  girl  raised  her 
head  quickly.  She  could  hardly  remem 
ber  when  he  had  called  her  by  her  first 
name,  and  the  tone  of  his  voice  was  new. 
"  Anne,"  he  repeated,  with  a  firm  note  of 
possession,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  that  made 
her  pulse  with  sudden  resentment,  "  I  am 
done  now." 

214 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

His  tone  was  almost  harsh,  and  he  was 
not  looking  at  her,  but  at  a  vivid  patch  of 
young  wheat  that  glanced  like  an  emerald 
on  the  brown  top  of  a  distant  sunlit  hill. 
And  Anne,  looking  hard  at  him,  saw  again 
the  change  that  the  summer  had  brought. 
The  fieriness  was  gone  from  him,  and  the 
old  impetuous  way  of  breaking  into  a  tor 
rent  of  words,  and  as  suddenly  breaking 
off  in  a  useless  effort  to  frame  thought 
and  feeling.  He  looked  as  calm  as  a 
young  monk  she  had  once  seen  at  Geth- 
semane — as  calm  as  though  his  peace,  too, 
was  made  for  earth  as  well  as  heaven. 

"Let  me  see.  It  must  have  been  ten 
years  ago.  It  was  coming  home  through 
the  woods  from  the  old  school-house.  I 
had  a  red  welt  on  my  forehead.  I  told 
you  I  had  got  it  playing  town-ball — that 
was  not  true.  I  got  it  fighting  about  you. 
It  was  Indian-summer,  I  recollect  that,  and 
sunset — you  remember,  don't  you?" 

"Yes,"  she  said,  wonderingly  and  al- 

215 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

most  gently ;  but  she  was  thinking,  too, 
of  Stallard  going  up  and  down  the  road 
—he  looked  lonely. 

"  I  asked  you  to  be  my  sweetheart,  and 
I  was  just  sixteen."  Marshall  might  have 
been  repeating  words  that  had  been  care 
fully  prepared,  so  finished  were  his  sen 
tences,  so  dramatic  the  quality  of  them. 
"  and  you  said  'yes' ;  yes,  you  said  'yes' ; 
and  that  was  ten  years  ago,  and  I  have 
never  loved  another  woman  since.  I  have 
made  no  pretence  of  loving  another;  or 
of  not  loving  one.  When  I  came  home 
from  college,  something  had  happened, 
and  you  began  to  say  'no' ;  but  I  kept  on 
loving  you  just  the  same — and  you  kept 
on  saying  '  no.'  I  am  doing  the  one  thing 
now,  and  you  are  still  doing  the  other. 
Ten  years!  That  gives  me  some  rights, 
little  as  I  may  otherwise  deserve  them, 
doesn't  it,  Anne?"  The  voice  was  doing 
good  work  now. 

"  Yes-,  Rannie,"  she  said,  and  she  had 

216 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

never  called  him  by  that  name  since  he 
went  away  to  school ;  but  if  he  noticed  it, 
he  gave  no  sign.  The  green  on  the  hill 
top  still  held  his  eyes,  and  for  a  moment 
he  said  nothing.  The  sunlight  was  very 
rich  for  midwinter,  as  rich  as  though  it 
had  been  sifted  through  gold-dust  some 
where.  It  seemed  palpable  enough  to 
grasp  with  the  hand  across  the  running 
water  that  was  making  it  pulse  in  quiver 
ing  circles  along  bush  and  tree.  It  fore 
told  an  early  spring,  and  made  Anne 
think  of  the  shy  green  of  young  leaves 
and  the  gold  of  the  same  sunlight  a  year 
ago,  and  then  of  Stallard,  through  the  soft 
gray  cloud  of  winter  trees,  walking  up  and 
down  the  road,  waiting. 

"  I'm  going  to  tales  them  now.  People 
inherit  tendencies  to  go  down." 

Anne  turned  to  him  again  :  he  was 
speaking  of  himself,  and  he  had  never 
done  that  before  but  once. 

"  Everybody  knows  and  remembers  that. 

217 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

People  may,  at  the  same  time,  inherit 
the  aspiration  for  better  things  and  the 
strength  to  rise  to  them.  Everybody  seems 
to  forget  that,  sometimes — even  you.  And 
yet  you  were  right,  and  I  haven't  a  word 
of  blame." 

Nor  had  he,  she  recalled  quickly,  that 
night  after  the  dance,  when,  losing  pa 
tience,  she  had  broken  out  with  her  de 
fence  of  Stallard.  ,She  remembered  now 
the  start  her  outburst  gave  him,  the  quick 
flush  of  his  face,  his  quick  restraint,  and 
the  steady  quiet  with  which  he  had  un 
flinchingly  taken  to  heart  the  bitter  truth 
she  gave  him,  and  his  courtesy  to  the  end. 
She  was  too  much  aroused  that  night  to 
care  what  pain  she  caused  him,  but  the 
memory  of  it  hurt  her  now. 

"  You  have  been  hard,  but  you  have  not 
been  unjust.  I  have  been  fighting  a  long 
time,  and  you  might  have  given  me  a  little 
more  credit  for  the  fight.  I  think  you 
would  have  given  me  more,  if  you  had 

218 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

cared  more.  Because  you  seemed  not  to 
care,  I  did  not  ask  it.  It  was  a  weakness 
to  want  it  ...  I  don't  need  it  now  .  .  . 
whatever  happens,  I  shall  keep  my  own 
path  just  the  same  ..." 

Anne  hardly  took  in  what  he  was  say 
ing,  his  voice  was  so  dispassionate.  Mar 
shall  had  always  been  generous,  winning, 
faithful — that  was  what  she  was  thinking. 
Why  had  she  never  loved  him  ?  It  was 
as  strange  as  that  she  should  not  know 
what  it  was  she  felt  for  Stallard. 

"  For  I'm  done  now,"  repeated  Mar 
shall,  inexorably.  "I'm  going  to  take 
my  rights.  I'm  going  to  leave  you  alto 
gether." 

She  heard  now,  and  she  turned,  half 
dazed.  Marshall  was  steeling  himself 
against  his  own  tenderness  and  going 
calmly  on : 

"  When  you  want  me,  if  you  ever  do,  you 
must  send  for  me.  It  is  all,  or  nothing,  I 
must  have.  And  you  must  give  it  un- 
219 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

asked  now,  if  you  should  ever  have  it 
to  give.  Yes,"  he  went  on,  as  though 
to  answer  her  unuttered  cry  of  surprise 
and  indignation  .  .  .  "  I  know  your  pride 
— your  foolish,  steely  pride — but  I'm  done 
now." 

Anne's  eyes  were  wide  with  bewilder 
ment.  Was  he  gone  crazy  ? 

"  I  have  loved  you  for  ten  years.  I 
don't  wonder  at  your  distrust  of  me,  but 
it's  different  now.  Perhaps  you  don't  yet 
trust  me  ?  In  that  event,  I  don't  care  how 
long  a  test  you  put  upon  me.  Only,  if  by 
some  miracle  you  should  want  me  to  come 
back,  you  will  have  no  right  to  say, 
'  Maybe  he  has  ceased  to  care  for  me  now.' 
You  will  have  no  right  to  say  that,  even 
to  yourself  —  to  think  it.  I  promise,  if 
that  ever  happens,  to  come  and  tell  you 
myself.  I  promise  that.  I  have  done  all 
I  can — all  I  should.  The  rest  is  with  you 
now,  wholly." 

Marshall  was  rising.    He  had  not  looked 

220 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

at  her  since  he  began  to  talk  —  he  had 
hardly  dared  for  fear  his  purpose  should 
fail  him — and  Anne  rose  too,  as  though  he 
had  bidden  her. 

"  If  you  marry  anybody  else,  I'll  wait 
for  him  to  die.  You  can't  escape  me  in  the 
end."  He  was  smiling  faintly,  but  his 
tone  was  almost  rough,  and  Anne  was 
ready  both  to  laugh  and  to  cry.  "  And  I'll 
never  come  till  you  send  for  me.  We'd 
better  go  now,"  he  said,  coolly,  and  he 
started  down,  Anne  following,  quite  help 
less,  without  a  word,  and  with  a  growing 
sense  of  desertion  that  oppressed  her  and 
made  her  unconsciously  look  for  Stallard 
when  they  emerged  from  the  undergrowth. 
She  was  quite  sure  she  would  see  him,  and 
there  he  was,  walking  rapidly  past  the 
gate,  but  he  did  not  seem  to  see  them,  so  in 
tent  was  he  on  something  down  the  road. 
Her  dress  caught  on  a  bush,  as  Marshall 
pulled  back  the  gate,  and,  when  he  stooped 
to  disentangle  it,  she  heard- the  mountain- 

221 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

eer's  voice  around  a  clump  of  bushes  be 
low  them.  Marshall  rose  quickly,  and,  the 
next  moment,  both  heard  what  he  was 
saying. 

"  No,"  he  said,  sternly.  "  I'll  give  you 
the  money,  but  you  must  go  back.  I  got 
you  out,  and  I  gave  my  word  you  wouldn't 
run  away.  You've  got  to  go  back." 

A  rough  voice,  strangely  like  his  own 
to  the  girl's  ears,  answered  something  un 
intelligible. 

"  Then  I'll  take  you  back  myself." 

A  low  oath  of  rage  and  the  shuffling  of 
feet  came  through  the  bushes,  and  Mar 
shall  caught  Anne's  arm. 

"  You  stay  here,"  he  said,  firmly,  and  he 
hurried  through  the  gate  and  around  the 
bushes.  Stallard  was  blocking  the  road 
against  a  rough-looking  fellow,  who  start 
ed  to  run  when  he  saw  Marshall.  Stal 
lard  caught  him  by  the  arm,  and  with  the 
other  hand  the  fellow  struck  the  moun 
taineer  a  fearful  blow  in  the  face. 
222 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

"  God,  man !"  shouted  Marshall,  indig 
nantly  ;  for,  to  his  amazement,  Stallard 
did  not  give  back  the  blow  but  caught  his 
assailant  by  the  other  Avrist. 

"  Come  here  and  help,"  he  said.  "  This 
is  an  escaped  convict." 

Marshall  ran  forward,  and  the  con 
vict  gave  up  and  dropped  stubbornly  to 
the  road,  coughing  hard,  crying  from 
rage,  and  cursing  Stallard  by  his  first 
name. 

"You're  a  fine  brother,  hain't  ye?"  he 
repeated,  with  savage  malice,  starting 
another  string  of  curses  and  stopping 
short,  with  his  eyes  fixed  on  something  be 
hind  Stallard.  The  mountaineer  wheeled. 
Anne  was  standing  there,  her  face  quite 
bloodless,  and  her  eyes  wide  and  full  upon 
his. 

"  You  heard  what  he  said  ?" 

It    was    the    mountaineer's    voice    that 
broke  at  last  through  the  awful  silence, 
and  in  this  test,  even,  it  was  steady. 
223 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  I  kno\v  what  you  thought.  This — 
this  is  my  brother." 

Anne's  eyes  turned  slowly  to  the  con 
vict,  who  lay  at  StallarcTs  feet  with  his 
sunken  cheek  towards  her;  and  slowly 
the  truth  forced  its  terrible  way  to  her 
brain  and  then  back  again  to  Stallard  in 
one  look  of  unspeakable  horror,  unspeak 
able  pity. 

"This  was  what  I  had  to  tell  you,"  he 
said,  quietly ;  but  his  face  had  whitened 
quickly,  all  but  the  red  welt  where  the 
convict  had  struck.  "  I  have  nothing  to 
ask — now."  Not  in  voice  or  bearing  was 
there  the  slightest  reproach  for  her. 

"  Get  up,  Bud,"  he  said,  kindly.  Anne 
turned  for  an  instant  to  Marshall,  when 
the  convict  rose,  but  it  was  a  second  rend 
ing  of  the  veil  for  him,  and  he  had  moved 
away  that  he  might  not  hear.  Before  the 
two  could  take  a  step,  she  was  at  the 
mountaineer's  side. 

"I  ...  I'm — gMng  with  you !" 

224 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

Marshall  heard  that  and,  but  for  his 
agitated  face,  Stallard's  calm  must  have 
broken.  For  he  understood,  even  then, 
what  was  beyond  Marshall  to  know,  and 
at  that  moment,  perhaps,  beyond  Anne. 
She  had  struck  into  his  heart  when  he 
was  most  helpless,  and,  to  atone,  she  would 
walk  with  him  through  the  streets  of  the 
town,  back  to  the  very  walls  of  the  prison, 
on  through  life  even,  if  he  asked.  All 
this  Stallard  saw — and  more — and  he 
shook  his  head. 

"  God  bless  you !"  he  said.  ..."  Come 
on,  Bud !" 

The  two  brothers  started  down  the 
road  towards  town  —  and  towards  the 
shifting  black  column  of  smoke  that  rose 
over  the  gray  prison  beyond. 

A  year  later  one  of  them,  faithful  to  the 
end  as  the  other's  keeper,  came  to  the  cap 
ital  to  deliver  his  charge  back  to  the 
Keeper  of  the  things  that  die. 

p  225 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

"  If  that  had  happened  before —  '  said 
Katherine,  questioningly ;  but  Anne  shook 
her  head. 

"  Not  that — not  that,"  she  said,  sadly. 
"  I  don't  know  ...  I  ...  ':  And  there 
she  stopped  still. 

A  flood  of  development  was  at  high 
tide  in  the  mountains  before  another  year 
was  gone,  and  it  seemed  as  though  the 
prophecy  of  Stallard's  first  speech  at  the 
capital  was  coming  true.  His  name  was 
slowly  radiating  from  the  great  capital 
then  ;  and  a  year  later  still,  Marshall  rose 
as  a  senator  of  the  State,  and  in  a  fervid 
piece  of  oratory,  in  which  he  was  now  with 
out  a  rival,  spoke  for  Boone  Stallard  for 
the  Senate  of  the  nation.  Stallard  was 
defeated ;  but  when  Katherine  Colton, 
who  was  a  guest  at  the  Bruce  homestead, 
told  Anne  of  the  quixotic  fight  that  Mar 
shall,  to  his  own  hurt,  had  made  for  the 
mountaineer,  Anne  let  her  head  sink  back 
out  of  the  light  into  a  shadow.  Then 

226 


THE   KENTUCKIANS 

Katherine,  who  knew  how  matters  stood 
between  the  two,  spoke  sharply  and  with 
the  authority  that  had  lately  come  to  her. 
As  a  result,  a  night  or  two  afterwards,  a 
buggy  creaked  softly  over  the  turf  from 
the  pike  gate  and  a  dark  active  figure 
climbed  the  stiles.  Katherine  rose  for 
flight. 

"  Please  .  .  ."  said  Anne,  ".  .  .  not  yet." 
From  an  up -stairs  window,  Katherine 
saw  the  moon  rising  on  the  two  at  the 
gate,  and  on  the  gracious  sweep  of 
field,  meadow,  and  woodland  that  had 
always  been  and  would  always  be,  per 
haps,  his  home  and  hers.  Lying  all  along 
the  east,  and  hardly  touched  as  yet  by  the 
coming  light,  was  a  bank  of  dark  clouds, 
as  mountainlike  and  full  of  mystery  as 
though  they  were  faithful  shadows  of  the 
great  Range  behind  and  beyond — and 
Katherine's  eyes  filled.  "When  she  went 
to  bed  she  could  hear  the  voices  of  the 
two  now  and  then  on  the  porch  below, 

227 


THE  KENTUCKIANS 

until  she  fell  asleep.  She  felt  a  pair  of 
arms  around  her  next,  and  a  pair  of  lips 
at  her  ear. 

"  Katherine !" 

"  Yes  ?"  she  said,  sleepily. 

Anne  kissed  her. 


THE    END 


BY  JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 


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